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Some of the supporting roles that I've done as an actor, I took them because I knew that I would get to watch some of the leading guys in the movies, and also I'd get to work with them.
Sep 26, 2025
It's actually easier to play a leading role than it is to play a supporting role.
There are so many films now where you know the story is a supporting role to the visual effects.
I think I have a lot to offer doing supporting roles as well.
There's a certain comfort in being in supporting roles because it's not all on you.
Give role players love. Praise can be most valuable when it’s merited by someone whose supporting role is often overlooked
It's much easier to play supporting roles because that's what I do in my life: I support my son.
When it's a minor or supporting role, you learn to make the most of what you're given. I can make two lines seem like Hamlet.
I don't care about being a star. I can do a supporting role; I don't have to be a lead
You have to listen to what someone is doing and help them get to where they want to go, musically speaking. I play a supporting role if someone else is soloing, and a guitarist will do the same for me while I am soloing.
Disneyland is the star, everything else is in the supporting role.
The truth is, the older you get, the less variety of parts you are offered. If you're a star and you've spent most of your career being able to take your pick of the litter, you notice when the offers start to diminish. You're too old to play leads, so you're offered the supporting role - but many stars don't want to make that transition. They see it as a sign of symbolic impotence. And that the audience will no longer regard them as a star. I love acting, and I'm not going to determine what I do based on what I fear other people might think. I do what I want to do.
Even though I've done a lot it also feels like I haven't done a lot. I've sort of popped in for supporting roles in things, and that's been really delightful.
No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.
We can't do both. If you want us to lead, don't criticize us. And if you want us to play a supporting role, then tell us who is going to lead.
Even though effective competition is the best tool to strengthen innovation and competitiveness in Europe, state aid can also play a very useful supporting role.
I grew up in Evanston and lived in Chicago for a long time, in Old Town and Wrigleyville. I did three films when I was in high school. The first was 'Class,' with Rob Lowe. I had a supporting role in that.
Corn is the hero of its own story, and though we humans played a crucial supporting role in its rise to world domination, it would be wrong to suggest we have been calling the shots, or acting always in our own best interests. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that corn has succeeded in domesticating us.
I think Melissa McCarthy is a force of nature. She's just incredible. And it's purely her talent that has rocketed her in such little time from a marvelous supporting role in "Bridesmaids" to being the lead in several films that are coming out this year. She's extraordinary.
There's a film there in competition [of Sundance Film Festival] called To The Bone. It's directed by Marti Noxon. I have a supporting role in it. It got really well received. It's a really great film.
I want to diversify a bit. I don't wanna throw myself into another big blockbuster or another big franchise anytime soon. So smaller films, just small little interesting parts, I think I'd even like to play around with some really good supporting roles and then develop into - I don't know just like feel my way into it a bit more. I don't know, I'd love to try some theater. That's my other thing. I'd love to do some Shakespeare.
I'm always open to not necessarily to do leading roles because I want to do roles that are the best, character role. And sometimes, it's not going to be a leading role. It's going to be a smaller, supporting role. So really, I'm open to doing anything.
I was never a pretty girl, so I wasn't the one to get the boy. I used to cast myself as a good sport. Sometimes I wonder if I do that too much with roles I play, because if I'm absolutely truthful, I quite like being the best friend, or the supporting role, and actually I ought to gear-change and make myself the leading role.
Just as the good actor perform well whatever role the poet assigns, so too must the good man perform whatever Fortune assigns. For she, says Bion, just like a poet, sometimes assigns the leading role, sometimes that of the supporting role; sometimes that of a king, sometimes that of a beggar. Do not, therefore, being a supporting actor, desire the role of the lead.
I went out to Bali, and I cast all of these supporting roles. I love that stuff. I just love actors. And then, Ryan Murphy asked me to direct second unit for him on Eat Pray Love. I was already booked on something else, but I joined them later. And then, I wrote him a thank you email and I got no response. I was like, "Okay, that's it." We didn't interact much on set either.
I've read crime fiction all my life. A thing that's bothered me about crime fiction is that it's generally about one or two people, but there's not much about society. I want to get away from that particular pattern: a lead, a supporting role and backdrop characters.
My approach to the work is the same, whether I had the lead or a supporting role. I consider myself a character actor in the true sense of the word. Unless I'm doing my autobiography, I'm playing a character.
It's rather rare when you play an older character in a movie in a supporting role to even get an arc.
People are saying, "Oh my God, Saudi Arabia has changed." It's a contradiction. Do you want us to lead, or do you want us to play a supporting role?
I think that the jazzy approach that I have is based on the way that I hear music and in the way I play a supporting role to the other people in the band.
Don Knotts won five Emmy Awards for Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role by an Actor or Actress in a Series [in Andy Griffith Show] in 1961, 1962, 1963, 1966 and 1967.
When the going gets tough, the prospect of delegating half your responsibilities to a willing volunteer, either to play a supporting role or take over the breadwinning, certainly holds allure.
It's a supporting role, and I relish the opportunity to take those relationships I've developed, the experiences I've developed, to carry the president's agenda to our nation's capital, to leaders there, but also to leaders in state capitals around America.
I try not to blame the public, because the public - men, especially - have seen not great portrayals of women in supporting roles, because they're not given the lead roles a lot of the time. Especially in comedy, they're relegated to the adversary, which is like "the mean girlfriend."
Sylvester wins, obviously [best actor in a supporting role in 2016]. That's the whole point of this. We're all getting dressed up to go to the Oscars to hear Sylvester Stallone, let no one get this twisted. The academy can't pay for a better moment than this: this is the Oscar's original darling.
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