Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If I could stomach the awful part of being a veterinarian, which involves sticking your hand up animals' behinds, I would be a vet.
I never know how I'll feel on any given day, but I've got to look around me and take what I got and find some inspiration, some anger.
One of the things I love about acting is other actors, looking into their eyes, and working off them, and listening and responding to them.
I never think of a project as just being comedy or just being drama - even with 'Masters of Sex.' I like being sort of messy, like life is.
Someone said I wasn't attractive enough. People say those things, but they make you stronger. Then you can win an Emmy and think, ha, ha, ha.
I'm not very comfortable being an actorvist so to get to do something that I believe in is a much more comfortable way for me to be political.
I know there are a lot of tall, beautiful actresses like Uma Thurman and Nicole Kidman who are my height, but they're still half the size of me!
I guess my height has hurt me as much as it's helped me. In comedy people don't mind casting tall women next to shorter men. It adds to the humour.
'Talullah' is a movie I'm really proud of. Sian Heder is the director/writer, and I think she's extraordinarily talented. I think it was a beautiful story.
I've never been with a group of people for that long. I mean, even my family I don't think I know as intimately as the people I worked with on 'West Wing.'
It was great to have a Republican character as likeable as Alan Alda was in the West Wing. He was one Republican I would probably vote for; he was old school.
I'm a big girl, but I have a delicate constitution emotionally. If I've been humiliated in some audition, I just cry all the way home and think, 'Oh my God, I suck.'
One out of forty American men wears women's clothing. We've had more than forty presidents. One of these guys has been dancing around the Oval Office in a prom dress.
I'm one of those actors who fall into the camp of never wanting to look at themselves on camera ever, thank you very much. I do not and will not, because I am my worst critic.
My dream is to have a creativity barn, in my back yard, which is full of musical instruments and every kind of paint and oils and paper, and you can just go in and make something.
I feel better when I'm working. I tend to not know who I am when I'm not working. That worries me a little bit... I've been fortunate to be so busy, but I haven't developed any other skills.
It's a little weird accepting your voice coming out of an animated character. You don't buy it at first because it's your voice and none of us like our voices when we hear them recorded back.
The way you talk to yourself sometimes is terrible! I hear myself, and I go, 'I can't believe you're talking to my friend Allison like that!' It's really terrible, the things we say to ourselves.
The first job where I actually made money was on 'Guiding Light,' the soap opera. And I played a maid. My name was Ginger, and I had a Brooklyn accent - a really bad one, if I remember correctly.
I trust other people to tell me if it's too far or tasteless, because there's not too much that I won't do. I like to push the limits. Obviously, that's more dangerous and more fun for everybody.
I can't imagine trying to be in recovery. I mean it would be hard enough with just life going along in a nice way, but then when awful stuff happens, how you maintain the strength to get through it?
Annette Bening should've won Oscar for American Beauty. I mean, I know Hilary Swank was there, she was so great too... Annette deserves one. She better win. I'm an Academy voter, and I voted for her.
Don’t ever underestimate the power of mentoring someone, or helping some young actor, doing a favor for them, or introducing - everyone needs somebody to help them along when they’re first starting out.
I'm kind of at the mercy of writers out there. I need a writer out there who wants to write a vehicle for me. Do it and get it to me immediately. I do want to be a lead. I want to play a lead role in a movie.
It's a challenge for me to make people like me. Maybe it's just my desperate need for people to like me, that I choose the characters I have to play. You will like me, I don't care what I've done, you're going to like me.
Being a figure skater myself and knowing what it took for my parents to get up at five in the morning to drive me to the rink before school and then drive me to practice after school - it's a huge commitment for any family.
With John Wayne Gacy - the serial killer who dressed up as a clown - there's just something about clowns I don't trust. I don't think they're particularly funny. They're a little spooky. Not my sense of humor, I don't laugh at clowns.
Aaron Sorkin wrote me one of the best female roles on television, I think. He's a wonderful writer for all people. If he chooses to write, hopefully he'll write something that involves more women next time, because I would love to do it.
I did Alan Ball's 'Five Women Wearing the Same Dress,' and then he put me in 'American Beauty.' Everything started to happen from all the years I put into the theater in New York City, and working, and having great parents who supported me through that.
The fact that 'Mom' is not joke, joke, joke - and is investing in these characters and their lives, things that really happen to people - I think it's resonating, and that's why people are tuning into it and not just dismissing it as a multi-cam sitcom.
It was terrifying when Aaron Sorkin announced that he was leaving West Wing, he and Tommy Schlamme. We felt like our parents were abandoning us. It was a tremendously sad day and I'm sure I will never understand exactly all the reasons why that happened.
Politics scared the crap out of me because I didn't grow up in a family where we talked about anything, really, except, 'Pass the peas, and do this.'... We didn't really have political discussions at the dinner table. I didn't learn how to watch or listen to politics.
I think one of my big skills is making unlikable characters likable or real in some way. No matter how hateful people are, there's always something vulnerable about them, or something that you can understand or relate to. I think that's my job as an actress - to find those.
I always feel like a doctor who loses a patient on the operating table or something where I felt just devastated and I beat myself up until I get to try it the next night and “I'll get it better tonight.” So I'm hard on myself. I think I'm not alone in that regard with acting.
I never watched Lost. I just thought it would be fun to be part of something that was such a big part of pop culture. But I thought I was going to be acting with more of the other people. I didn't know that I was going to be on my own on the island, doing this whole other storyline.
Comedy is a serious business. It's frustrating when I can't find the right thing that makes the crew laugh. If I don't make them laugh, I get very disappointed in myself. You don't really have a live audience, so you just depend on the crew to let you know if you're doing something funny.
I just wish that I had a part in everything Aaron Sorkin wrote. Sometimes I wish I was a member of an acting troupe where we all just kept working together, the same people. I can't, unfortunately, be in everything he writes. I'm excited for him, but I'm jealous that I wasn't a part of it.
In my career, I am so so happy and grateful for everything I've gotten to do. And yet, I wish I had started off earlier so I could, I don't know... I certainly have not not gotten work because of my age, but I'm just gonna pray and hope that the roles will still keep coming as I get older.
I got offered that role in Transamerica that Felicity Huffman did. That was a part that I was like, "Well, maybe I should've done that." I'm at peace with it, but that is one thing that I did turn down that went on to do great things for her. I wonder what would've happened if I would've done that.
I do like ensemble work. I would like to do a lead role, though. I didn't shy away from that. I'm desperately looking for a lead role to do in a film, an independent film, and it just hasn't come my way yet. I'm desperately looking for that role that will put me in a lead category. Or a television series.
The wonderful thing about Crystal in Mr. Sunshine is that she doesn't have any boundaries. She's not aware socially of what's correct and incorrect. Crystal's probably the craziest character I've ever had to do and the furthest I've gone, with the only exception being Away We Go - I was pretty big in that.
Growing up, everybody told me I was good. I was playing ping-pong with my father, and he'd say, 'That's a good shot,' but I'd mess up the next one, and I'd yell, 'Don't tell me that! I'll mess up! Just don't say anything!' You know, if someone says, 'You can't do that,' then I'm going to be, 'Yeah, you watch me.'
One of the advantages of being an older woman in films,is that you don't care as much about so many things. There are women in history throughout the world that need to be portrayed. Women don't stop being interesting at 20, they get more interesting and more fascinating and people are going to have to write about them. We're undeniable.
I didn't understand the reasons why I was there in the Lost episode - the mysteries of the island. I just instead made my own little reality, made it as simple as possible. I figured I was a crazy woman, just a little screw loose. I don't know how I got on that island. No one could tell me how I got there either, so I just assumed I got there on a shipwreck, and I went a little nutty.
Aaron Sorkin uses a lot of the same people again and again - the people he likes. I think if there's ever a part for me, he would consider me for it. I hope so. Sometimes familiarity breeds contempt, other times it helps you. It's just amazing to work with his scripts. There's never any fat in them. It's all perfect, and there's such a rhythm to it. The musicality of his writing - it's so specific and unique to him, and such a joy to play as an actor, because there's no sentimentality.
There was a courtroom scene where my son is convicted of killing Kevin Spacey's character. I find the bloody T-shirt and realize my husband did it. I get up the courage to take the shirt and send it to the police as evidence. I go out of the house for the first time. There was all this stuff I had to do that became quite truncated, because they slimmed down the movie. I understand the American Beauty is brilliant without all that stuff, but for me, personally, it was hard to see all that go.