Time & Perspective Quote by Kathy Bates

Bates frames acting less as glamour work than as a disciplined form of empathy with teeth. The first clause - "a role that hopefully I feel empathy with" - is doing quiet PR for the craft: she’s pushing back against the idea that actors merely try on costumes. Empathy here is not sainthood; it’s access. She wants a character’s internal logic to click, even if the character is abrasive, monstrous, or just profoundly unlikeable. That’s classic Bates, whose career has been built on making people you might fear or dismiss feel legible.

Then she pairs that softness with a hard edge: "but also that has that challenge for me to play". The subtext is that empathy alone can become complacency. She’s describing the sweet spot where understanding doesn’t flatten difference. She needs the role to resist her, to force technique, research, physicality, voice - the whole toolkit - instead of letting her coast on natural charisma or familiar emotional registers.

The rhythmic repetition - "a different kind of role, a different type of character, a different time period" - reads like an actor’s manifesto against typecasting, and a woman’s, too, in an industry that loves to shrink actresses into a few marketable boxes. Coming from Bates, it also signals agency: she’s not chasing novelty for novelty’s sake; she’s defending growth. The context is a long, decorated career where range is the point, and where the challenge isn’t only artistic - it’s staying expansive in a system designed to make you repeat your last win.