Pigeonholed Quotes & Sayings

There are many fans of hard rock music that have been wrongly pigeonholed as apathetic. This music is not music for the elitist coffeehouse culture in SoHo. It' s rock 'n' roll music for kids across the land, and I think that makes it much more subversive in a way, in that it has the form and the function of a powerful, populist music, but it can carry very incendiary messages. — Tom Morello

I hope I am pigeonholed with comedy. I'm really not interested in writing the darker stuff, the emotional stuff. — Jane Espenson

You get pigeonholed. Some people are film stars, and some are theatre stars who do one-off telly. Somehow, I get into long-running series. — Kevin Whately

As you know, Hollywood loves to pigeonhole all the actors and actresses, and suddenly I got 're-pigeonholed' as an action actor. — Liam Neeson

If I hadn't left South Africa, I felt I was at risk of being pigeonholed. I looked around and saw actors who, 10 to 15 years into their careers, were still playing stereotypical Afrikaans characters, stereotyped Indian characters. That was not something that I wanted for myself. — Adhir Kalyan

I was asked in an interview once: You're writing another book with a female lead? Aren't you afraid you're going to be pigeonholed? And I thought, I write a team superhero book, an uplifting solo hero book, I write a horror-western, and I write a ghost story. What am I gonna be pigeonholed as? Has a man in the history of men ever been asked if he was going to be pigeonholed because he wrote two consecutive books with male leads? — Kelly Sue DeConnick

'Pigeonholed' isn't the right word, because I feel like I've had a very wide range of characters that I've been allowed to play. — Lance Reddick

My music is pretty versatile; I have a lot of genres and styles. I don't think I should be pigeonholed into one thing. So we'll see where my career goes. — Crystal Bowersox

Being pigeonholed is the death of all actors. — Jack Nicholson

I think any actor in their right mind is afraid of getting pigeonholed. — Zosia Mamet

I've tried actively to define myself and redefine myself, and not be pigeonholed. — David Alan Grier

I wouldn't want to be just pigeonholed as an extravagant director. — Harold Prince

I don't want to get pigeonholed, and I want to try my hand at anything that excites me. I'm not just a Disney writer. — Kelly Marcel

After 'Radio Flyer,' to this day, every family-oriented script or script with kid actors comes across my desk. That's just Hollywood: you get pigeonholed, and it's both a blessing and a curse, but you live with it. — David M. Evans

As an actor, you know, I love not being pigeonholed, which is great. No one really knows who I am. So that's a positive. — Kathryn Hahn

I think, for some artists, the fear of taking on a political identity stems from not wanting to be pigeonholed as political actor or a political musician. It becomes this thing where somehow your art can no longer exist on its own and be multifaceted. — Carrie Brownstein

The goal has been not to get pigeonholed. I like working in different genres. I'm gonna try to be entertaining and funny and do my usual thing. — Adam Mansbach

Since I write the lyrics, I don't want to be pigeonholed into a person who's out there preaching these songs. If you read the lyrics, there isn't a story being set up for you. You have to use your imagination to get the best out of the songs - if you choose to do that. — Linda Perry

I'm not in a certain type of genre, and I can't be categorized or pigeonholed. That leaves a wide range of what I can do for myself, for other people, and with other people. — Shamir

I'm beginning to get pigeonholed as the girl who plays the crazies and weirdoes - and that's not the entirety of who I am. Hopefully, the whole point of being in this profession is that you change into anyone you want to be. — Fairuza Balk

It's funny to be pigeonholed so late in life but there we are. — Maggie Smith

I embrace my blackness, just as I do my conservatism and my Christianity, but I don't want to be defined or pigeonholed by any one of the many elements that make up my character. — J. C. Watts

I wanted to make my sophomore film as different as possible. I didn't want to be pigeonholed. I didn't want to be identifiable. — Cary Fukunaga

You can get pigeonholed in Hollywood and people think of you in a certain way. — Luke Wilson

There is no neutral ground when it comes to the tolerance question. Everybody has a point of view she thinks is right, and everybody passes judgment at some point or another. The Christian gets pigeonholed as the judgmental one, but everyone else is judging, too, even people who consider themselves relativists. — Gregory Koukl

It's beyond my control who's going to cast me or how you're going to pigeonholed, so for me, it's just I want to keep doing different things because I want to get better, so hopefully I'll be hired to do them. — Bradley Cooper

Yeah, there's a tendency to get pigeonholed in Hollywood. — Mark Ruffalo

The one thing I will never do is become pigeonholed. — Vin Diesel

And then there are the eternal questions of love and sex. Can there be friendship between men and women as long as the hormones rage and rule? How is sex related to love
and love to sex? Are we truly pigeonholed in our sexuality
or does society alone insist on this? What is 'straight'? What is 'gay'? What is 'bi'? And does any of it matter deep in one's soul? Shouldn't we get rid of these labels in an attempt to be really open to ourselves and to each other? — Erica Jong

I get pigeonholed into type-A personality characters, but I'm really not type A. I'm kind of a spaz. — Alison Brie

I just didn't want to be pigeonholed as an 'ethnic comic' or an 'Asian comic.' I just wanted to be on the same playing field as everyone else. — Aziz Ansari

I think cubism has not fully been developed. It is treated like a style, pigeonholed and that's it. — David Hockney

It gives me more breadth as an actor and as an artist to not be pigeonholed. — Jeff Bridges

I don't want to get pigeonholed. — Miranda Lambert

I don't want to get pigeonholed just doing just family films and fantasy films ... I don't really want to get pigeonholed just doing anything in particular. — Dave McKean

Morality and righteousness is based on intent, love, and in giving; yet, how is it that we as humans have come to view the act of sex with a different set of arbitrary laws? Specifically pigeonholed as an act between man and women, and with righteousness based on an unsystematic number of people we have slept with; as a civilization we have come to bind society with a set of laws largely advantageous to a specific sex, with the minority heavily antagonized and chastised. The universe knows not what sexual morality is, only what is right and wrong. The same principles that dictate morals also command the virtues of sex. Is it with the right intent? Is it based on love? Is it based on giving? — Forrest Curran

Once you're sort of pigeonholed into something, it's quite difficult to get out of it. I have no aversion to playing a gay character again, but it would definitely have to be the right role. — Sarah Shahi

I'm selfish, I think. I think an artist has to be. I'm not worried about what people think. I play the parts that I find interesting. It'd bother me more to be just pigeonholed into doing what people think is ethical or that's boring to me. I don't pick parts with that in mind, I just find interesting stories. If it's interesting to me, then I do it. — Denzel Washington

It's important to get well-rounded right off the bat. A lot of experienced dancers can get pigeonholed into one thing. I've been hired for a lot of different gigs simply because I can do a lot of different things with different levels of dancers. And it's sad to me that some dancers don't do more. — Mandy Moore

I decided at the outset to invest in a fairly broad range of businesses, as I didn't want to get pigeonholed into one sector. — Andy Murray

I'm very conscious of the fact the directing career has taken some odd turns. Maybe there's enough bulk where I'm now pigeonholed in the 'eclectic box.' — Kenneth Branagh

The lesson that I'm learning is that I've got to be careful of being pigeonholed because people can take a piece of tape and edit out the first half and only pull out one snippet that could start a firestorm. — Herman Cain

I don't like the monikers, and I don't like being pigeonholed. You know, I'm a human being. — John Lydon

If you look at my career, doing albums with Norah Jones, Justin Timberlake, Gucci Mane and Lil Wayne or KRS-One and Jean Grae, I can't be pigeonholed. — Talib Kweli

I chose to stylize 'Among Friends' and add a dark comedic element because I didn't want to get pigeonholed as a genre director. I have a pretty dark sense of humor and knew that in order to get distribution, I had to do something in the genre for my first time out. — Danielle Harris

It was no accident that I made 'Hoop Dreams' because it concerned a sport that I loved and hoped would be my dream, however far-fetched that turned out to be. Because of the success of that film, Hollywood pigeonholed me as a sports biopic guy, which led to 'Prefontaine' and two cable sports films. — Steve James

I don't want to be pigeonholed into the guy who's against everything. — Michael Moore

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through. — Sam Mendes

I wanted to stay on a career path of the likes of Natalie Portman. I didn't want to be pigeonholed into a certain genre. I sort of believe that slow and steady wins the race. — Sami Gayle

When actors get pigeonholed, that's their own doing to a large degree. Because if you do something that people like, obviously they're going to ask you to do it again. It's up to you to say no. If you're that insecure about working, you'll probably do what you're known to do. — John Larroquette

I never pigeonholed myself - the only reason you'd want to pigeonhole is to monetize your business and, as a person, I don't see the importance of doing that. My music took off above the rest of those things: You can just make a song, put it on a CD, and get it out to all these people. — M.I.A.

It used to be that you kind of got pigeonholed into one thing - you're either a stage actor or a TV actor or a movie actor. Today, there's a lot of crossover with film actors doing television, which never happened before, so those lines are a little bit more blurred than they used to be. — Aaron Tveit

My first horror film was - well, I don't know. 'Bless the Child' is sort of genre, but 'May' was such a cult hit that after that, I just started getting offers for horror. I think I got a little bit pigeonholed in it right off of 'May' because there was just such a large response to that film. — Angela Bettis

I'm not so widely known that I'm going to be pigeonholed. — Jeri Ryan

Every actor wants to change things up a bit. You don't want to be pigeonholed, and not just because of what the industry might think. — Aidan Turner

I don't want to be pigeonholed into doing just romantic comedies. But they're fun, and especially for women, it's nice to go to see them and enjoy that breath of fresh air. — Kristen Bell

Since the beginning of my recording career in 1975, I have had a little difficulty because the pop stations think I'm a jazzer who doesn't have a feeling for pop, so it's hard to get my records played. Similarly, black urban radio doesn't understand that with my R&B roots, I am more than a jazz singer. So I get pigeonholed. — Al Jarreau

I don't like to get pigeonholed. I don't like it when people think they have you sewn up. — Paul Weller

I'm a huge fan of a lot of different genres of music, and I really felt like somehow I had been pigeonholed a little bit - maybe of my own doing - and in a way where I felt like I was sort of falsely defined. What my music was being called wasn't really the music I was always listening to. — Kathleen Edwards

I don't like to be pigeonholed, and I really like that people never really know what's going on with Metllica. — Lars Ulrich

I have complete freedom, and there's no way to get pigeonholed or bored. What could be better than that? — Richard Marx

Keep your opinions to yourself. I think it's important that I stay neutral on politics and remain hard to understand. I don't want to be pigeonholed as conservative, liberal, independent or anything. I back the man for the things the man believes in, not whether it says "R" or "D" down there beside his name. — Merle Haggard

There are two sides to being pigeonholed. There's, 'Oh, no, I'm going to be Chandler for the rest of my life,' but there's also the fact that getting to play Chandler opened up doors to me. It's now my job to find things that shake it up a little bit. — Matthew Perry

I didn't want to be pigeonholed as an artist. I wanted to be able to have other stories to tell. — Malcolm D. Lee

You don't pigeonhole yourself, people pigeonhole you. If the world is not at a place yet where it can just be like, "This music is gay and it's music," then it's not my fault that it gets pigeonholed, it's not the people in the band's fault, it's because people won't just let music be music, people who need to put a name on something or to critique something. — Beth Ditto

People call me for the ballads. Apparently that's where I've been pigeonholed. But it's really interesting and really fun. It's my favourite part of the job, writing. — Sia Furler

I can create clothes for so many different time periods. I've always tried to avoid being pigeonholed. Plus, everything I learn about design and costume from one movie somehow works its way into something else. — Colleen Atwood

I wanted to quit the industry when I was eighteen and finish '70s', finish my contract on the show and go to college because I was pretty convinced that after '70s' and after being on a show for eight years that I would be very much pigeonholed for something specific that I didn't want to be a part of anymore. — Mila Kunis

I think I was pigeonholed pretty early on. And I started late in my career. I was 33. — Rene Russo

I got pigeonholed a bit. When I wanted to be an actress, I never wanted to be the kind of actress I became. — Rachel Ward

I'm a film director. Gay is an adjective that I certainly am, but I don't know that it's my first one. I think if you're just a gay filmmaker, you get pigeonholed just like if you say I'm a black filmmaker, I'm a Spanish filmmaker, I'm a whatever. — John Waters

I don't like to be pigeonholed; I don't like when people won't see me for something because they don't think I can do it. I always feel like, at least give me the shot. — Khandi Alexander

For me, there are worse things than being pigeonholed as the nice guy. — John Krasinski

I've done a lot of sci-fi, so I was a little hesitant because you get pigeonholed into that genre and world. But at the same time, I love sci-fi because the women are so strong and independent and smart. — Laura Vandervoort

I had been making films for almost ten years, and the head men at RKO thought of me only in terms of musicals. I found no fault with that, except I just couldn't stand being typed or pigeonholed as only a singing and dancing girl. I wanted to extend my range. — Ginger Rogers

I've never been pigeonholed and I've experienced so many different kinds of skin - what man will do and won't do, what you should do and shouldn't do. This is what's exciting about being an actor; where philosophy majors sit in classrooms or write books about human behavior, we're actually acting them out in front of cameras. — Ron Perlman

When you think of the typical Teach For America corps member, soldiers and ex-bankers are probably not the people who come to mind. In fact, there is no such thing as a typical corps member. They can't be neatly pigeonholed or painted with a broad brush. — Wendy Kopp

As an actor, you want people to see you as a whole person, not just a single facet of your emotional spectrum. And whether it's the audience or the industry, you end up getting pigeonholed as one thing. So for people to see I can be funny and stay in shape is a bit of a weight off my shoulders. — Scott Porter

Actors do tend to get pigeonholed. People want to know who you are so they can put you in a box. It's lovely to be known for such diametrically opposite roles. — Tom Hiddleston

I am not depressed; my life is just shit. As a consequence of my not being depressed, I am not like them. You need to know this from the very off. You need to know I, Arch Fry, will not allow myself to be neatly pigeonholed, erroneously labelled or closed off in some tidy little box - one to be shelved away and conveniently forgotten about.
No, I am not depressed: NOT. DEPRESSED.
You see, I'm just not stuck in some deep unassailable chasm like all the rest, like all these other poor fuckers who've so readily accepted that noose of a word. — Tom Conrad