I don't want to do panel games or adverts. I really like

Dylan Moran once spoke with wit and longing: “I don’t want to do panel games or adverts. I really like challenges. I always get roles as an art teacher or a photographer. In the future I want to play something like a mugger/assassin/pastry chef.” Beneath his humor and irony lies a truth that echoes through the ages: the spirit of the artist cannot endure confinement. He declares not only his dislike of the trivial, but his hunger for transformation, for roles that stretch the soul beyond the easy and familiar.

To say “I don’t want to do panel games or adverts” is to reject the lure of the comfortable path, the path of mere visibility or profit. Many are content to remain where applause is easiest and rewards are sure, but Moran reveals the soul of a seeker. He craves not convenience, but challenges—those roles and tasks that demand risk, vulnerability, and imagination. This is the eternal cry of the artist: “Do not give me safety, give me fire.”

Yet he confesses, “I always get roles as an art teacher or a photographer.” These are noble professions, but in the world of performance, they represent a cage of typecasting, the repetition of the same mask until it dulls the actor’s spirit. For the actor, as for the poet or the philosopher, stagnation is death. Moran wishes not to be bound by a single image, but to inhabit the full spectrum of human possibility, from the grotesque to the sublime, from the criminal to the comic, from the violent to the absurd.

It is telling that he names the mugger, the assassin, and the pastry chef. These three figures could not be more different, yet all share intensity. The mugger moves with desperation, the assassin with precision, the pastry chef with delicate creation. Each embodies an aspect of humanity often hidden: brutality, discipline, artistry. Moran’s desire reveals a longing not only to entertain but to embody the full theater of existence, to show that even the strangest roles carry a spark of truth.

The ancients knew well the need for variety in expression. In the great theaters of Greece, actors wore masks not to conceal themselves but to expand themselves, becoming kings and beggars, gods and fools, all within a single festival. To live many lives upon the stage was to reflect the vastness of humanity. Dylan Moran’s longing echoes this same ancient tradition: that the actor’s art is not to be trapped in sameness, but to traverse the heights and depths of the human condition.

History too provides examples of those who refused to be confined. Leonardo da Vinci was not content to be only a painter; he was inventor, anatomist, engineer, dreamer. David Bowie did not remain one kind of singer, but changed his mask again and again—Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke—each transformation a defiance of expectation. Their greatness lay not in repetition, but in daring metamorphosis. Moran’s playful wish to be a mugger/assassin/pastry chef is part of this lineage: the refusal to shrink the self, the desire to be many instead of one.

The lesson for us is clear: do not remain trapped in the roles that others assign you. If you long for growth, seek challenges, even if they seem absurd or beyond your reach. Life is not meant to be lived as one character, repeating the same lines, but as a vast play with many acts. Embrace risk, step into strange roles, and dare to reveal sides of yourself that others never expected.

Practical wisdom flows from this. If your work has become a cage, ask: What new role can I take on, even briefly? If you are always the listener, try speaking; if you are always the leader, try serving; if you are always the quiet one, try daring. Like Moran, look for transformations that surprise you, that push against habit. For in the challenge lies renewal, and in renewal, life itself.

Thus, Moran’s words, though cloaked in humor, bear eternal weight: “I really like challenges.” Let us take this as our guide. Reject the easy, seek the strange, embrace the impossible, and become, if needed, the mugger, the assassin, or the pastry chef—for each, in its own way, reveals the boundless power of the human spirit.