I look for a role that hopefully I feel empathy with and that I can understand and love, but also that has that challenge for me to play - a different kind of role, a different type of character, a different time period.
I was never an ingenue. I've always just been a character actor. When I was younger, it was a real problem, because I was never pretty enough. It was hard, not just for the lack of work, but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.
I love everything. I love being the empathetic characters. I love being the villains. I think it's like when we're kids, we like to play all kinds of crazy characters and dress up.
The problem I have these days is that women are often cast in a role - as a police officer, for example - and then are invariably perceived by the other characters as succeeding in a man's job, as if they're doing it in spite of being women.
I have no idea and I think Steven King strongest suit is the characters that he does create, all in the same area where he lives. The way he describes them is one of his fortes and it boggles my mind how he's able to do that and to create so many. It must be thousands by now.
The thing that I've run up against is that it's always been an either-or proposition, especially in Hollywood. You're either young and glamorous and you're going to get the lead and get the man at the end of the picture, or it's the opposite: you're a character actress, you're not attractive enough for the other role, and so you're playing the friend or the killer or the lesbian or the doctor or whatever.
Because I'm a woman, because I'm a character actress, because I'm over 40, I'll be very interested to see, not just for me but for other actresses, how Hollywood treats us in the next ten, fifteen years. I'm hoping that it's not going to be so easy to shove people under the rug, as they have in the past.
I try to always stretch myself to fit the characters that have been presented.
