Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The thing I don't like on television is when somebody does something that makes absolutely no sense just for the shock of it.
I must work harder to achieve my goal of not seeking approval from those whose approval I'm not even sure is important to me.
I've always thought my strengths were I'm smart, and I have a good sense of humor. I definitely struggle with feeling confident.
If you're meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you've already set the bar too high.
I didn't grow up identifying with beauty. I grew up thinking I could be smart and funny - those are the things I got feedback on.
Once again, I've been thwarted by the massive difference between my vision of the successful me and the me I'm currently stuck with.
Writing a memoir isn't particularly interesting to me. I'm not like Ellen [DeGeneres], where I can write, 'Water bottles--they're crazy!' and it's funny.
Getting anywhere you want is hard work. In this photography culture, everything looks so amazing. But it's actually very hard to get to where anybody gets.
Sometimes I'll think, 'That was a really nice day. I ate well, I exercised, I called some friends, wasn't working too hard,' but I rarely have one of those.
Some people think my father was a spy, because of working for that government agency in Vietnam, but he can't find his car keys, much less keep a national secret.
I've learned a lot from trainers over the years, but mainly that you need discipline to stay in the gym and out of the many fine cupcake emporiums on every corner.
As actors we always say that once the person in a scene gets what they want, the scene is over. It's resolved. But life is never resolved - you're always in the process.
I have to introduce the part of me that feels like a winner to the part of me convinced I’m a loser, and see if they can’t agree to exist somewhere closer to the middle.
I think there's more pressure to stand out in a way that is measurable externally. The fame culture is definitely way worse and weirder than it was when we were in high school.
I've spent a lot of time wondering, What's going to happen? What's going to happen? I try not to allow myself to do that much anymore. I think ive gotten more comfortable with the unknown.
Well, it's more of a sane life to be part of an ensemble! I find that the work can be more specific too and I have to really make sure I know where I am in the story because I'm not in every scene.
As an actor, you have to maximize your time, because you don't know what's going to happen in your 50s and 60s and 70s. It's like the career of an athlete: For many people, it ends at a certain point.
If you do have something you love to do, the fun part of the job is no different than what was fun about doing it in high school for no money. I thought there would be some greater reward in succeeding.
My time at Barnard was fun but stressful. I transferred there from the acting conservatory at NYU, and my Rolling Around On the Floor Pretending to Be a Lion classes didn't translate into many academic credits.
I live with someone, actor Peter Krause, who didn't find an interest in being an actor until the very end of college. So my message is: There's so much freedom left. There's no ticking clock. It's just not true.
I really think if you're trying to look good, do something athletic. I have a little mini tramp, and sometimes I'll just try to jump for 20 minutes. It gets your blood circulating, and that always looks really pretty.
I've pretty much always been on a diet since I was born. And the women in my family struggle, so I find the less I think about food, in a way, the happier I am. In general, I think I eat less the less I think about it.
One of the things I like about the show is it redefines the idea of what it is to be a mother, which at its most basic level is to take care of a child. It doesn't mean you have to look like the ladies in the Lysol commercials.
Honestly, I was such a tomboy as a kid. People were taking from their mothers' closets - I was taking from my dad's closet. It was the '80s, so it wasn't terrible, but I was wearing my dad's dress shirts over jeans from the Gap.
I personally was driven to be an actor for the love of telling a story. It was very closely linked to being a reader as a kid and being transported by literature and art. It had nothing - zero - to do with anything resembling fame.
Honestly, 'Parenthood' was not what I planned. I didn't plan to do another drama. I didn't plan to play a single mom. I didn't plan, even, to do an ensemble show. But I hadn't found anything I liked as much. I just connected to the show.
I think what my hope is is that the only downside of having a steady job on television is, I think for all actors, there's a piece, there's some adrenaline, and part of the love of the job is not knowing what's coming next, and the variety.
The best part of getting to do what you like is just doing it. That doesn't have to do with being famous or even successful or even powerful. I see people in life who are just doing a job and seem to be having a good time. And that's the trick.
I am here to tell you there's nothing in people knowing you. There's actually a loss in that! Really, the reward in life is genuinely the day of work you have. It's not the name you're making for yourself or the clicks and likes - it's such an illusion.
As I've gotten older, I've gotten more liberal, and my father is increasingly conservative. It's so shocking to me because I always thought we had the same politics. The day I realized we voted for different presidents, I practically fell out of my chair.
I came from a Sorkin-like project in the sense that there was no freedom to change a line, which, in a weird way, is its own freedom because you're living within that structure and know this is what it is. You just adjust. Every project has its own personality.
Nobody ever seems to want my advice about serious stuff. People will be like: 'Who made that sweater?' Or 'How did you get your hair so straight?' They don't to come to me for the relationship advice or deep stuff. In fact, my little sister actually hides from me.
I'm sure you've felt this way along the way: Yes, I got to do what I wanted to do. But it was much harder than I thought it was going to be, and it continues to be. You never get to a place that is a place of rest. I think that's OK. It's not bad - life is hard work!
We're all working hard, but so far away from what we actually want to be doing. We're all peering in at the window of a party we aren't invited to yet, a party we wouldn't know how to dress for, or what kind of conversation to make, even if we came as someone's guest.
These days I have to be extra nice in stores. It never fails that whenever I look as bad as I can possibly look or I am sort of cranky because the store is out of something, that is precisely the time when someone one will recognize me and say: 'I really like your show.'
One thing I've learned is I actually don't like variety very much. I like having the same thing over and over: assorted lean proteins, arugula salad, quinoa or brown rice with soy sauce, olive oil, lemon, and salt. Those ingredients can pretty much get me through the week.
Because I have no consistent schedule as an actor, it was difficult to develop one as a writer. Ideally, I'd like to write first thing in the morning, every day. But sometimes I'm called to set before the sun comes up, or I've worked late the night before, or I'm on a plane.
We moved in 8th grade, so 7th grade I was doing okay, and then 8th grade, everything fell apart. I had no fashion sense to speak of. We only had a couple of hair care products back then. We didn't have all these things to tame your hair. I had glasses; I had braces. I had it all.
Acting is the most bizarre profession. You can stay in it for years and not really be in it and be waiting for someone to give you an opportunity. It's like when I watch 'American Idol' and see people who have been told to believe in themselves at all costs: It's not always a good idea.
I'm baffled when young actors aren't familiar with current film, television and theater, or aren't interested in older films or plays and the history of the craft in general. If you don't know what's out there, and what came before, then how can you picture yourself working, and how can anyone else?
I could never have predicted the invention of streaming, the rerelease of the show Gilmore Girls on Netflix, and that people still wanted to hear about it. I do love how we came back to it, but it was never up to me. It won't be up to me this time, either. If it ended there, I would be sad, but I also like what we did.
That's the thing that always stuck out to me - the idea that quantity becomes quality. I always took it to mean if you do anything enough, if you keep putting effort in, eventually something will happen, with or without you. You don't have to have faith when you start out, you just have to dedicate yourself to practice as if you have it.
I feel real ownership in this show. I feel very invested in it. I care very much about it. I don't feel any more like a hired hand, you know? It's a strange feeling - I feel personally responsible for how the story goes. What happens. What the weaknesses are. And so in a way, some of the changes gave me an opportunity to have a voice in a different way.
It's core to my beliefs now: Sometimes in being given a challenge, you're actually being given a real opportunity, and a lot of that is how you handle it. Do you feel sorry for yourself or do you think, All right! I'll see what I can make out of this? I've had that over and over. If I hang out in the disappointment, I'll just be disappointed all the time.
I definitely wanted to be an actor. I didn't want to be on TV, I didn't want to be famous, I didn't want to be anyone in particular; I just wanted to do it. I see young people now who look at magazines, or American Idol and their goal is to have that lifestyle - to have good handbags, or go out with cute guys from shows, or whatever. But I definitely wanted to be an actor.
Over and over in the play my character says, "I'm thirty-two years old," as if that should explain everything that's wrong in her life. I don't know what it's like to be thirty-two, but I can imagine. I imagine she means she's stuck in an in-between time, she's at an age that isn't a milestone but more of a no-man's-land, an age where she's feeling like her hopes are fading.
I'm gonna try to talk about this in a secular way, but where's the spirituality of just being a person? I think it contributes to this rise in bad manners and mean comments; people are being driven by seeking something that's just designed to keep them seeking something. I'm not reducing people in this age to phone-addicted dum-dums, but we have to remind ourselves to also study compassion and inner life as well.
I would rather be a person who struggled there than someone who had a great, easy time and then got out in the world and was like, "Wait a minute, I didn't get voted class president? What's going on?" You know, "popular" doesn't necessarily correlate to anything. "Popular" still has to get up at 7:00 in the morning and go to work and do something worthy too. There's no edge, really, that you get from being whatever was popular in school.
I was always torn between wanting whatever I pictured as a typical high school experience and that being just a part I wanted to play. I've written about this, but one of those typical high school experiences was drill team. Like, I just really wanted to wear a uniform and get on the bus and be part of this group. As an only child, the idea of blending in - and literally everyone being in sync and not standing out at all - felt like kind of a fun family thing.
My biggest goal was - I thought, God, if I could just be a rep company member at the Arena Stage in Washington, D. C. and get to play a bunch of parts in a year! And now in my work everything is about promoting it. It's not about the doing of it! Everything is: You have to sell it, and they ask you to tweet about it or do photo shoots, even for the smallest job. There's an imbalance in terms of what is actually gratifying. The stuff that is gratifying is, like I said, the day of work and the doing of it.