Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'd been waiting to turn thirty my whole life. For some reason, when I was eleven, I was like, 'I know thirty's going to be good. Get through those twenties!'
The joy and the pain for me is about tightroping between being a cynic and being a romantic - the tug between barely believing in anything and hoping for everything.
People are always trying to be on top. And not always with a macabre agenda, but I think that people are desperately trying to remain in control, rather than being honest.
However much people want to politicize every movement of a controversial woman in life or on the screen, we just have to keep being personal and truthful, or we will explode.
I know actors who say acting is acting, but I love the live-ness of an audience. I love feeling the energy of a room and allowing them to sort of teach you how to do it better.
Whenever I get stuck on something, I'm like, 'What would I do if I wasn't afraid? What would I write if I wasn't afraid? What would I say in this situation if I wasn't afraid?'
This world of 'Star Wars' is just so accepting and beautiful that the idea a droid and a human are trying to waddle their way into a relationship is something that's celebrated.
If you go into the mainstream with a female perspective that seems to resonate with a lot of people, you have a political agenda imposed on you: you are told that you are a feminist.
I always knew that if I was ever going to perform something that I wrote in front of an audience, I was going to do the thing I most like to experience as an audience member, which is to be tricked.
When an audience is laughing with a character, they make themselves so vulnerable, and they open up. They expose their heart the moment they're laughing, because they're relaxed and they're disarmed.
The element of surprise is the most important thing and what keeps me interested in writing. I can feel it if I've written that predictable or boring line, and I will carry that around with me all day.
We're just so self-conscious. However much we try not to be, on some level, especially as a woman and an actress, you have so much pressure when it comes your hair and the bags under your eyes and your skin.
I suppose the cult of the strong woman character on TV has probably been misinterpreted in so many different ways, meaning that a woman can't be emotionally complicated or want things or can't be weak in moments.
Fleabag knows men and women are equal and should be treated as such, but what she's confused about - and what I was confused about - was the idea that wanting bigger boobs doesn't mean you don't want equal rights.
I think, a lot of time, I'm just writing my worst fears, of the idea of losing my mom or my best friend or doing something so terrible to somebody that's kind of deemed unforgivable or having a really broken family.
I think a lot of time, I'm just writing my worst fears, of the idea of losing my mom or my best friend or doing something so terrible to somebody that's kind of deemed unforgivable, or having a really broken family.
As women, we get the message about how to be a good girl - how to be a good, pretty girl - from such an early age. Then, at the same time, we're told that well-behaved girls won't change the world or ever make a splash.
No one would touch me with a barge pole as an actress. It hit hard. I thought, 'What am I doing? This is a stupid idea!' It's like throwing yourself into a massive pond, and you feel like you're going to drown so quickly.
The main relationship in the whole series was the one between the camera and Fleabag. I had to convince myself that whoever was watching on the other side of the camera was instantly complicit with Fleabag and instantly a friend of hers.
You have to make an audience feel like they can - and want to - change something about what they are watching. And that might be the thing that galvanises them in the end, that makes them come out of themselves and say, 'No! Don't do that!'
Every single performance of 'Fleabag,' I would learn so much from the audience reaction or how you could change it all the time, and I loved that sense that the performance is ever-growing and changing and could be affected by the audience.
I change my mind every five minutes. I'm very brutal with my own process. I throw everything away very quickly, and then I have to go out and rummage through the rubbish in the middle of the night to try to find a bit I'd written a week ago.
If you hear somebody say something absolutely horrendous about their own life, in quite a flippant, offbeat kind of way, when you meet people clearly trying to be strong and brave, the ones who are really good at it are the ones who break my heart the most.
I don't think the challenge is asking an audience to like a character; it's inviting them to try and understand them... then making that journey entertaining and worth their while. It's a classic trick, but it's human, and it allows characters to have more depth.
I just love any kind of language that can change the energy in a room. There are no limits for me, as long as it feels like it's being used in a particular way to garner or elicit a very particular reaction so that you can then use that reaction later for something else.
'Transparent' was huge for me when I first saw it. I felt that, from an authorial point of view, no one was trying to sell characters to us, you know? It's the idea of not having to adore these characters and want to cuddle them; you just have to be into them and their psychology and be compelled by them.
After the play of 'Fleabag,' we had conversations with different channels and with film companies about whether 'Fleabag' should be a half-hour sitcom, an hourlong, serialized drama, or a film. And I knew that it couldn't be a drama because I wanted to hide the drama - that had to be the surprise. I knew it had to be comedy.
I just love any kind of language that can change the energy in a room. There are no limits for me, as long as it feels like it's being used in a particular way to garner or elicit a very particular reaction, so that you can then use that reaction later for something else. But when it's gratuitous language or physical exposure, then I get a bit like, "Oh! Put it away!"
The characters I didn't have actors in mind for, that was the scary moment. Because in any production, until you find the right person, you're constantly judging your writing or what it is that isn't working here or not clicking here, because you have amazing actors coming to read for it, and if something's not clicking, it can't be them because they're amazing actors. You're sort of completely doubting yourself.