Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'll be totally honest in that I feel tremendously lucky that I am offered incredible jobs all the time to direct, but the problem that I have just personally is that there are only so many years in my life to dedicate to certain projects. When you're directing something that's generally two years of your life, you have to understand that. If I'm going to pour that kind of love and energy and sweat and heartache, all that juju into something, I'm going to lean into my own projects before someone else's.
I was with Brian De Palma at the time, and he said he wrote the role specifically for me. I don't know what that says about the way he saw me, since the role was of a castrating killer. Brian came one morning to the house, said "Here's your Christmas present." He wrote the character to have a Swedish accent, but since I couldn't pull that off, he switched it to French-Canadian. It was such a romantic time in my life. Everyone was young and passionate and convinced they were going to change film forever.
I don't want people thinking of me sexually. I don't want people to be like, 'She's hot-looking,' you know? I want them to listen to me for what I am saying. And I think the best way to do that is to sniff my armpits, and like, sit and burp every now and then. It just completely throws people off. I had a couple of offers to do some hot scenes in the shower with some guy and to make it real hot and sexy. The next thing you know, I'd be the next J.Lo or something. But that's easy. I want it the hard way.
Getting to a place where I am comfortable saying things was hard-earned for me. I've chewed on the ground glass of my own experience. I saw Gloria Steinem speak, and I was just like, Shut the front door. She was saying that she didn't come into her own until her 40s, and she was asking herself the question, Why should she have to get married? And I just thank God someone asked that question, right? I think we're the first generation of women asking ourselves certain questions and deciding for ourselves.
If I were twenty or thirty years younger, I would start afresh in this field with the certainty of accomplishing much. But I should have to learn from the bottom up, forgetting the theatre entirely and concentrating on the special medium of this new art. My mistake, and that of many others, lay in employing "theatrical" techniques despite every effort to avoid them. Here is something quite, quite fresh, a penetrating form of visual poetry, an untried exponent of the human soul. Alas, I am too old for it!
I had been in a place where I was letting too many people dictate who I should be and what I should be, and I was trying to make everybody happy to the point where it was just killing me. I'd completely lost myself. It's kind of funny now that people think I've completely changed myself for Marilyn Manson, when this is actually the first time in my life that I took a stand and said, "This is who I am and this is who I've always wanted to be, and I'm finally with somebody who lets me be who I want to be."
I love sitcoms, and I grew up on sitcoms. That's my tasty junk food. So I wanted to create a sitcom and have some really quirky characters, because most of the stuff they make now is just so marginalized. How interesting is a white guy who's 28 years old and lives in New York? What story have we not seen about a character like that? Just as a writer, it's so much easier to come up with comedy when you have a really oppressed Indian boy. Or a mother who is an addict but still has to take care of her kids.
Doing this web show - people underestimate what it takes to do a web show successfully. They underestimate the amount of work that you have to do to get it to your audience after it's made. I think you have to work so much harder, especially if you don't have a huge budget. You have to know how to get your audience engaged, because the Internet is so distracting, and there are so many choices. People, even if they love your show, will forget to go back for episode four, because you know, people are busy.
It's easy to pretend 'to be fierce and fearless because living your truth takes real courage. Real fearless and fierce women admit mistakes and they work to correct them. We stand up and we use our voices for things other than self promotion. We don't stand by and let racism and sexism and homophobia run rapid on our watch. Real fearless and fierce women complement other women and we recognize and embrace that their shine in no way diminishes our light and that it actually makes our light shine brighter.
I'm incredibly proud to have been nominated in the past and it really means a lot to me because I do work very hard when I'm making a film and I do really do absolutely give my all. To get that kind of pat on the back, it's really amazing and also never something that I anticipated would possibly happen to me, ever. So I am very, very proud to have been there before. And, you know, the nice thing about nominations is that, same as awards, no one can actually take them away from you and I'm proud of that.
The act is in itself a lie. You're faking something. The girl is lying there, she's pretending that she doesn't know the camera's on, she's getting banged, and "accidentally" it leaks out? Everyone leaks their own sex tapes! That's a ploy to get famous - that's not about the sex. It's not like when Madonna did her Sex book, and it was an artistic endeavor where she acknowledged it and spoke about it and was so upfront about it. It's different. It's not upfront. It's not honest. It's a ploy to get famous.
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.
Stella: I got a nose for trouble. I can smell it ten miles away... I can smell trouble right here in this apartment. First you smash your leg. Then you get to lookin' out the window. See things you shouldn't see. Trouble. I can see you in court now, surrounded by a bunch of lawyers in double-breasted suits. You're pleading: 'Judge, it was only a little bit of innocent fun. I love my neighbors like a father.' And the Judge says, 'Well, congratulations, you've just given birth to three years in Dannemora.'
To me representing clairvoyance, how was I going to achieve that, how I was going to capture that? For me, it all became about her gaze and the way she takes you in. It's a rhythmic thing and a stillness thing to consider but these are little details, little nuances. We were invited to the sanctity of her home and there were roosters running around and she's screaming, "Jackie, be quiet!" Even though she's in the middle of the thing. And these are the details that we wanted to incorporate into our story.
I only want to do good projects. I want to make good decisions. If it's just a dumb movie, then no, I'd rather stay in school. But if it's a movie worth telling and that I think I would really benefit from, then I would like to do it. And that's one of the reasons I still live in Colorado. I love being with my family and going to school, and then when I come out to L.A., that is the time to be in the movies. People ask me the questions, I do the promotion work, then I get to go back home and live my life.
All I want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air. With one enormous chair; Oh wouldn't it be loverly? Lots of choc'late for me to eat; Lots of coal makin' lots of heat. Warm face, warm 'ands, warm feet, Oh wouldn't it be loverly? Oh, so loverly sittin' abso-bloomin'-lutely still! I would never budge 'til spring crept over my window sill. Someone's head restin' on my knee; Warm and tender as he can be, who takes good care of me; Oh wouldn't it be loverly? Loverly, loverly, loverly, loverly.
Theresa Rebeck's writing is so scarily funny. I just love how unapologetic she is with her writing: she doesn't try to make her characters likeable or heroic, she just really makes them human. Hopefully, the audience is able to love them in the end - or have whatever feelings that they want to have about all of them - but I love that she doesn't have that agenda. That is something that, as an actress, was really appealing to me; to just get to be in this group of people who are complicated and very human.
I have my own peculiar yardstick for measuring a man: Does he have the courage to cry in a moment of grief? Does he have the compassion not to hunt an animal? In his relationship with a woman, is he gentle? Real manliness is nurtured in kindness and gentleness, which I associate with intelligence, comprehension, tolerance, justice, education, and high morality. If only men realized how easy it is to open a woman's heart with kindness, and how many women close their hearts to the assaults of the Don Juans.
Have things to look forward to: Plan a trip, treat yourself to the spa, make plans in the future so that you can focus on what you're looking forward to versus how unbearable your present is. Understand that your brain is detaching. It's the same part of the brain that is activated as a cocaine user feening for their next fix. You're literally in withdrawal. Understand that it takes time for your brain and neural pathways to detach. You're not going crazy - it's just a process, and that process takes time.
The thinnest I've ever been was after I had my appendix out, during the London run of The Seagull. I went down to 112 pounds and realized my brain doesn't work when I'm that thin, so I can't do my job. That's why, when I came out here, I never had that whole Hollywood pressure thing. I never said I wanted to be a lead actress; I never said I wanted to be a film actress. This need to trump everyone bewilders me. I'm only 25. I'm not better than anyone. I just want to watch other people and learn to be good.
We're in crisis mode as black actresses. It's not only in the sheer number of roles that are offered and that are out there, but the quality of the roles. The quality - and therein lies the problem. We're in deprivation mode because me, Alfre and Phylicia, we're in the same category. Whereas if you take a Caucasian actress, you have the one who are the teens, in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s - they're all different. There are roles for each of them. But you only have two or three categories for black actresses.
The thing we need to work on as a country is our educational system. To me, that is something that our generation needs to be focused on. To make sure that for our next generation, every child - no matter what background, no matter what ethnicity, no matter whether they're whatever gender - that they are all educated to have real equal opportunity. That's number one for me. But I have no question that if it's not our generation that will make sure that that happens that it will be our children's generation.
I like the diversity that my children are exposed to every day. I love the way their brains work. Joe [her son] turns to me the other day and says, ‘One day, I will have a girlfriend. But I might have a boyfriend. If I’m gay.’ He’s 7! And I said, ‘You might have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, darling.’ And he said, ‘Which would you prefer?’ And I said, ‘My love, that would be entirely up to you, and it doesn’t make any difference to me.’ But that he knows! It’s a real privilege. Talk about the best education.
When you train as a dancer, you understand you have to work exceptionally hard. I think dancers are the hardest - working people in show business. You have to push your body beyond where you thought it could go. It's athleticism. Perfection doesn't exist, but with classical ballet, there is an ideal, and I got obsessed with that ideal. In some ways, it was problematic because I don't have an ideal ballet body, but the discipline is what I carry with me to this day. That's my park, the discipline of dancing.
I'm inspired by strong, courageous women. My mother is the definition of a self-sufficient, independent woman whom I have always looked up to. I also greatly admire incredible women like Aung San Suu Kyi, and human rights attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was wrongfully imprisoned for 4 years in Iran, simply for giving a voice to the voiceless and defending the helpless. And I'm in awe of the young Pakistani student and activist, Malala Yousafzai, for her bravery and resilience in the face of brutal repression.
I know a lot of people have a hard time talking dirty - they dont know what to say, how to start, or when to end it. Also, at first they will think they sound ridiculous. And they might. But let me just say that talking dirty is so important in sex. And its pretty easy. To wit: Establish from the very beginning that you like this. And trust me, you want to do it early on. Because if you wait too long to introduce the concept, your Special Lady Friend will be a little thrown and might not take you seriously.
It's not normal for me to feel jealous. I'm competitive with myself more than anything. And anyway, all of my friends in the business are bigger than me! Most of them are musicians, and I think music takes them to a whole new level. For me, I'm going to try out music, but it will be more fun than anything else. I'm really trying my hardest to become a well-respected actress. All I really want to do is movie after movie after movie. I love acting, and I want to create that so I can be around for a long time.
Luxury cruises were designed to make something unbearable (a two week transatlantic crossing) seem bearable. There's no need to do it now, there are planes. You wouldn't take a vacation where you ride on a stage coach for two months but there's all-you-can-eat shrimp. You wouldn't take a vacation where you had an old-timey appendectomy without anesthesia while steel drums play. You might take a vacation while riding on a camel for two days IF they gave you those little animal towels wearing your sunglasses.
In making a movie, you're part of a big machine. Even in a small movie there are still so many people involved in the process, and it costs so much money to make. There is so much more invested in it for a lot of different people, so much money is sunk into it that they usually want some guarantee or promise that it's going to be able to do something on a financial level. There's just a lot more messing with you in film. I love movies and I love to watch movies and being a part of the whole film experience.
I kind of started with this foundation, and tried to do all the research I could do for Alice [Cullen], and then every time a [new] director would come in, they have their own artistic take on things and add in new elements. And a lot of times they would ask, "What did you love that you portrayed, and what do you wish that you could show?" So I felt, with each installment, I got the opportunity to add on something. I think she was very - you know, really sweet, [laughs] a little odd in the first installment.
I've always wanted a normal life, and this is what I got. Being an actress wasn't a plan at all, so what's happened to me is very strange. Life isn't very normal, even though I'm still very much a normal girl. I ride the subway, I ride the bus, and all of that. It's the people around me that have changed. I love when I go to a restaurant and I walk past, and everyone waves. That's always really funny. It's strange. It just goes to show that whatever plan you have for your life, you are wrong, a lot of times.
I've been acting since I was ten years old. I had two lines in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves at the community theater I was very focused and I loved it. My parents believed in the arts and being well rounded. So I played piano and violin, I danced and acted. They never thought I would go into acting though. They just wanted a well-rounded child and it was a bit of a shock to my dad when I said "I want to go to acting school" because he is a psychology professor and was thinking of something more academic.
Modern acting is method acting, most of it. And there are sort of different schools, so I guess I'm not really from one school or another. I had a number of different teachers but they were all kind of drawing from the same pool, which is - What do you want? What are you doing to get what you want? And, what is in the way? These are basic acting questions. Knowing the answers to those questions. So you're talking about objectives and actions and obstacles. That's a sort of shorthand that gives you a language.
Blind audition format is what make our show unique and gives it so much more integrity. After all, the show is called The Voice. It's about vocals, and you have to stand out to get the attention of these four, Grammy-winning superstars who have an amazing ear and know what they're talking about. They rely on their ear as well as the reaction of fans in the audience to figure out whether that contestant is worth pressing that red button for. It's a great concept which keeps everybody on the edge of their seat.
I think that comes with a collaboration with the writers. I think that we get cast in edgier roles because we are a little more offbeat, so people - as we get to know the writers, and as the writers get to know us, they start to write around us more, and that's why I think the pilot is not always the best way to get to experience a new television show, because we're fitting ourselves into these characters. Whereas as the show evolves, they're writing the characters for us and for our strengths and weaknesses.
We do have the ability to shift our paradigms - by shifting our belief systems, by working on ourselves, by looking very closely at how we show up in the world. It's why I'm into health and wellness. It's why my partner and I are very focused on creating a life that is about being connected; it's about being present. Because my life was probably so much in the past. I was so fearful. I was so fearful of the future because I was so scared of my past. So if you can work towards being present, then you can shift.
You can't ask the guy with the checkbook to always be the person. So, we actors have to try. And believe me, it's not just young people who are struggling with this, trying to get things of substance made because of the proliferation of technology that it's just harder and harder to get things that really matter made. But they are being done and you just have to fight the good fight and try to... if you have something that you have written, you have to do your best to try to get it made in whatever way you can.
We receive mixed messages about taking good care of ourselves. Love thy neighbor as thyself means to love thyself and thy neighbor. Yet, self-love often is confused with selfishness and conceit. We are selfish when we do not love and accept ourselves, and attempt to take from others to fill the emptiness. Conceit indicates low self-worth and an attempt to conceal it. It is difficult to extend to others what you have not been able to give yourself. Take good care of yourself so you can care about the rest of us.
Kinky is using a feather. Perverted is using the whole chicken. Sex is more than an act of pleasure, its' the ability to be able to feel so close to a person, so connected, so comfortable that it's almost breathtaking to the point you feel you can't take it. And at this moment you're a part of them. The difference between light and hard is that you can sleep with a light on. Sexiness wears thin after a while and beauty fades, but to be married to a man who makes you laugh every day, ah, now that's a real treat.
Everyone’s childhood plays itself out. No wonder no one knows the other or can completely understand. By this I don’t know if I’m just giving up with this conclusion or resigning myself — or maybe for the first time connecting with reality. How do we know the pain or another’s earlier years, let alone all that he drags with him since along the way at best a lot of leeway is needed for the other — yet how much is unhealthy for one to bear. I think to love bravely is the best and accept — as much as one can bear.
I really have to thank Facebook ... I didn't know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time. I would never say the people on it are losers, but that's only because I'm polite. People say 'But Betty, Facebook is a great way to connect with old friends.' Well at my age, if I wanna connect with old friends, I need a Ouija Board. Needless to say, we didn't have Facebook when I was growing up. We had phonebook, but you wouldn't waste an afternoon with it.
I am very excited to work with people who have a strong vision of what they want. They're trying to tell a story, and they want to use me. I'm there to facilitate that. I really like that. I'm like, "Tell me where your frame is. Tell me what you want, what kind of story you want, and I will facilitate it." That's sort of my job, and it makes my work better when I'm working in that kind of a frame, and hopefully it's their work. It's incredibly collaborative, in the sense that you're working toward a common goal.
Frankly, I've never considered my own figure so exceptional; until quite recently, I seldom gave it any thought at all. My biggest single concern used to be getting enough to eat. Now I have to worry about eating too much. I never used to bother with exercises. Now I spend at least 10 minutes each morning working out with small weights. I have evolved my own exercises, for the muscles I wish to keep firm, and I know they are right for me because I can feel them putting the proper muscles into play as I exercise.
It is in the irony of things that the theatre should be the most dangerous place for the actor. But, then, after all, the world is the worst possible place, the most corrupting place, for the human soul. And just as there is no escape from the world, which follows us into the very heart of the desert, so the actor cannot escape the theatre. And the actor who is a dreamer need not. All of us can only strive to remain uncontaminated. In the world we must be unworldly, in the theatre the actor must be untheatrical.
Then with Lucy [Hale], her little thing that I kind of learned from her is her country music because she’s obsessed with country and at the beginning, I wasn’t a huge fan of it, but I was listening to some songs that she plays in the hair and makeup room and she’s also so funny, too. She does these character impersonations and they’re just so funny. Made up characters of course, but she can switch into someone else so fast. I’m always laughing at Lucy and she’s like a little Polly Pocket, you know? The tiny one.
I think it is every woman's duty to make herself as attractive as her time and means permit. After all, there you are, in your person- a living symbol of the progress of art, science and imagination. To be as attractive as we can be is almost a civic duty; there are so many sad and ugly things in the world that I think women should say to themselves humbly, not with vanity, 'I will try to be as pretty as I can, so that when people look at me, they will feel refreshed. I will make an effort to be easy on the eye.'
When we hold onto the negative in ourselves it comes with endless guilt. We hold onto a lifetime of floating visions and regrets about what we should have done or should have become. Conscience recognizes wrong and tries to atone. But guilt turns into resentment. Conscience brings us closer to each other; guilt drives us apart. Create a new feeling. Every time guilt settles in your stomach, write "I forgive" on a piece of paper. Send it up the chimney, tear it up and flush it, put it in the garbage. Don't eat it.
I just think it's really funny and entertaining. I mean, I don't necessarily take them really seriously - I don't even think a lot of really good films get seen. But I don't think that's what it's about. I mean, how amazing was Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For A Dream ? Especially as she was acting with herself most of the time. I don't understand how a performance like that can't win. I was so affected by that movie that I had to turn it off. I felt as if I was on drugs and my heart was about to leap out of my body.
I've actually found that most of my jobs have been in sci-fi. I realized it because sci-fi has the biggest fan following. Every time I do a play in London all these sci-fi fans come out. They ask me to sign things from all these little projects that I did. I hadn't even made the connection. It doesn't always have a spaceship and guns; sci-fi has been projected on in someway. I did Never Let Me Go, which is sort of Star Trek-y. It's about the future and training humans. It's sci-fi too. It's such a broad umbrella.
Once you do something that people respond to, they understandably think of you in that way, and you want to work and it's fun and it's wonderful. I think a lot of people in all different fields find themselves in a moment of repeating certain beats. There's also a moment that is personally related to age as well - in whatever field you're in, you say, "Wait a minute, where am I and how did I get here? How has this changed from my original intent and what do I want to do about that now?" That's part of the process.