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Daily Inspiration Quote by Catherine Bell

"The best part? Probably being able to portray such a respectable, ethical, intelligent, strong woman. That's still pretty rare in our business, unfortunately"

About this Quote

There’s a sly double move in Bell’s “The best part? Probably…”: it sounds like the breezy gratitude expected of press interviews, then quietly indicts an industry that still treats decency and competence as casting risks. The rhetorical bait-and-switch is the point. She isn’t marveling at the character’s strength so much as at the fact that strength can still be framed as a novelty item - a “best part” rather than a baseline.

The stacked adjectives (“respectable, ethical, intelligent, strong”) read like an itemized list of things female characters are too often denied, or punished for having. “Respectable” and “ethical” hint at how women on screen get slotted into extremes: saint, seductress, sidekick, spectacle. “Intelligent” and “strong” are the qualities that, in many narratives, must be explained away (trauma), softened (romance), or made palatable (quirk). Bell’s phrasing pushes back by insisting these traits can coexist without apology, without the character needing to be “difficult” to justify her authority.

The dagger is in the tail: “still pretty rare in our business, unfortunately.” “Still” implies we were supposed to be past this; “our business” spreads responsibility across the whole pipeline - casting, writing, financing, marketing - not just a few bad scripts. Coming from a model turned actress, the line carries extra bite: someone hired first for surface is pointing to the deeper scarcity. It’s not a celebration of a role; it’s a quiet audit of an industry’s imagination.

Quote Details

TopicHonesty & Integrity
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Bell, Catherine. (2026, January 16). The best part? Probably being able to portray such a respectable, ethical, intelligent, strong woman. That's still pretty rare in our business, unfortunately. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-best-part-probably-being-able-to-portray-such-123669/

Chicago Style
Bell, Catherine. "The best part? Probably being able to portray such a respectable, ethical, intelligent, strong woman. That's still pretty rare in our business, unfortunately." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-best-part-probably-being-able-to-portray-such-123669/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The best part? Probably being able to portray such a respectable, ethical, intelligent, strong woman. That's still pretty rare in our business, unfortunately." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-best-part-probably-being-able-to-portray-such-123669/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2026.

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Catherine Bell on portraying respectable, ethical women
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Catherine Bell (born August 14, 1968) is a Model from United Kingdom.

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