Hollywood Inequality Quotes

I never wanted to be an actress who complained about the lack of roles for women.

I have the strangest time to get cast in anything. 'Ghost' was the same thing. Six months I had to wait for them to decide they had seen everybody possible. Why not? What limits me? I'm black? Oh, am I black?

What's hardest for me to swallow is when there is a love story, say, with a really high-profile male star and there's no reason I can't play the part. They say, 'Oh, we love Halle, we just don't want to go black with this part.'

Without mentioning any names, there was a film that was being done, and I ran into the producer on the plane. It was a book that I really, really loved, and I said, 'I'd love to be a part of this.' And they made it clear that that was not going to be possible - for no particular reason other than that there was just no part for a black person.

I wrote 'Thelma & Louise' in 1988, and we shot it in 1990. Everyone kept saying, 'This is so groundbreaking... this is going to change the landscape,' but I don't see that result at all. When we saw some female studio executives, we were hopeful that more women would be hired as directors, but that didn't really seem to happen.

Viola Davis is a perfect example of somebody who's so much better than the parts she has the opportunity to play.

The lack of women directors is a sad fact of life. Kathryn Bigelow's thrilling Best Director win may help turn things around.

I believe that we are still hovering around the realm of Asians playing all types of Asians. I do not see that changing any time soon just because there is a limited pool of Asian actors.

When they make a woman's picture, they treat it like a 'woman's picture.' In the '40s, they didn't treat Joan Crawford movies like that, but as the big movies of their year. I'm upset that there's no 'Terminator' with a woman in Arnold Schwarzenegger's role. Because that would make just as much money.

It's a better time for actresses on TV than on film.

The top stars like Angelina, Cameron (Diaz), Sandra Bullock and probably now Jennifer Lawrence probably gets paid the same as their male counterparts. The problem is the averages. Because there are not enough parts for women to star in and get paid. So when you look at the total amount women make as compared to men it's paltry.

It's very hard, you know, for an Asian actor to be in a prime-time television series.

I was playing the villain 'Falseface' on Batman, and I got wind that they were going to pay a young starlet $25,000 to be in the same episode. Well, I wasn't getting anywhere near that amount of money, so I refused to let them put my name in the credits.

I can't say I have enough experience with Hollywood to feel that I've encountered racism there. I can tell you that I did about five fruitless years of auditioning for voiceovers where I did variations on tacos and Latin accents, and my first screen role was as a bellhop on 'The Sopranos.'

Hollywood can be a really tough environment for anyone trying to make a living. Unfortunately for actors of color, namely Asian Americans, opportunities have been and remain substantially limited. One place this is not the case is on 'Hawaii Five-0,' where we have three Asian American series regulars and a landscape rich with diversity.

An agent said he didn't know what to do with me, I wouldn't be able to play any parts but lesbians and aliens.

I can't tell you how many incredible directors I long to work with, but then I look at their IMDb page, and they haven't made a single movie about a woman.

You know, right now, they say - I don't know who says this, but somebody told me - there's three male roles to every female role. And I guess I'd work on evening that up. Making great roles for women. It's just such a huge challenge.