Actor and singer Selena Gomez has said she no longer gives her name when applying for film and TV roles due to being typecast.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 32-year-old Only Murders in the Building star said she is "almost done" with music and wants to focus on acting, describing it as "the field that I originally wanted to be in".
Gomez began her career as a child actor on the children's TV show Barney and Friends and the Disney Channel sitcom Wizards of Waverly Place before moving into music with the pop rock band Selena Gomez and the Scene.
She went on to enjoy a solo career and continued to appear in films including Spring Breakers (2013), Rudderless (2014), and The Dead Don't Die (2019).
She is one of the stars of the Oscar-tipped Emilia Pérez, currently streaming on Netflix.
Speaking about wanting to do more acting, Gomez told the US outlet: "Music will always be in my soul, but I never really got to spend enough time in the field that I originally wanted to be in.
"And I've been very strategic and trying my hardest to pick projects that are going to be compelling and not necessarily what people would envision me doing. That's something I get a high off of."
She said she did not want to do projects that would be seen as "obvious".
Gomez admitted that being typecast had been "the biggest challenge that I've faced as an actor" and saw her rejected for being "too young" and well-known.
The Texas-born star added: "I'll sometimes send in a tape when they don't know it's me, or if it's in person, my managers will just say, 'Oh, we have a client that'll have a read', and most of the time, they'll go, 'OK'.
"And it worked on one of the movies I did, because they looked at me as I walked in and I thought I'd lost it immediately because they went, 'Ooohh'. I was like, 'No, no, no, no, just let me read'.
"It was Fundamentals of Caring, a cute little movie, and it worked, I got it. You kind of have to do the dance."
Despite successes like #OnlyMurdersInTheBuilding and #EmiliaPérez, the most-followed woman on the planet (and newly minted billionaire) Selena Gomez still encounters skeptical casting directors: "We don't tell them it’s me" https://t.co/eBDPw10UvL pic.twitter.com/FfyilbbgAF
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) November 20, 2024
The Lose You to Love Me singer explained that the film industry wanted to see her in "very similar" roles to the ones she has previously played, which she said were "soft spoken" and "underdog" characters.
She said: "I love those movies, but I have goals of wanting to work with specific people, people on my dream board, and so whenever those opportunities arise, I'll put myself in that room, no matter what it takes."
Gomez said directors Aaron Sorkin and Martin Scorsese were at the top of her list of people she wanted to work with, adding that she did not "need to be the star".
She said she had "done just as much as I wanted to do in music".
When asked what she meant by the comments, she replied: "Almost done. Music isn't going away. I just set it down for a second."
Source: Press Association
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