Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I was younger, my father was in the Foreign Service and we lived in Nigeria, Panama, and London, but for the most part I grew up in the South and D.C. I got the travel bug as a little person and I've bounced around a lot.
When I'm challenged, I grow. I never want to be in a situation where I'm not challenged and not afraid. One of my favorite feelings is stepping into a film and knowing that I'm a little bit afraid of what I have to accomplish.
When I was five, I discovered a secret box that contained Mummy's stage makeup. It was like finding buried treasure. I tried the rouge, the eye shadow, the lipstick. But I couldn't get the rouge off. Mummy spanked me terribly.
I know when we were really little, my mom would say to me, "If you can, the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning, just get quiet and ask God, 'Who is Patricia?' You can feel your own nature and know who you are."
When you're a very career-oriented woman, sometimes you don't have as much time to go meet all kinds of guys. You're a little bit limited to the guys that work in your office. I think a lot of girls can relate to that problem.
I'm glad I made business investments, because it gave me the confidence financially to make brave choices. If I hadn't done that, I'd still have been trying to play 19-year-olds in films. I know there are other avenues for me.
I went to McGill University, but I didn't graduate. They won't graduate me because I didn't have a degree in any one thing. I studied everything and they were like, "You studied too many things, so we can't give you a degree."
There's a lot about the character. It doesn't always happen, but there are some characters you really create a relationship with, almost as if they were your friend. And you never get into their heads again or think like them.
I like the ritual of putting on my makeup, putting on my costume, doing my warm-ups. I eat the same dinner every night before I go on stage. I like having something that I can count on, something that feels stabilizing for me.
I usually feel like the role comes to you to sort of illuminate some piece of where you are in your life. I feel like I myself am a single woman and I'm childless - by choice - at this point, and I don't know what will happen.
My doctor suggested doing some blood tests and immediately discovered that my white blood cell count was low. So then I went through many more tests including bone marrow biopsies until they figured out that I had neutropenia.
I like TV in the way that it moves quickly, I like the pace of TV because I'm that type of actor. I like to go-go-go. I don't have to do 50 million takes of something. I guess I'm not that patient. I really like the pace of it.
Everyone's films have done well of late. So when your film doesn't do well, you ask yourself, 'Oh, did I make a wrong choice?' And I strongly feel that it's your choices that make a good career. The track record has to be good.
On-screen relationships are the best because you don't have to worry about saying the wrong things. And if the guy's got a girlfriend, or I'm not attracted to him, it's even better. It's just my character kissing his character.
For myself, I would rather take less roles and be working on films that I'm passionate about, that are going to challenge me and that I'm going to be growing from. I don't ever want to take a movie just for the sake of working.
I have no regrets about not having children. I still wait for the pang of guilt, but I have none. I tune into the television show 'Nanny 911' occasionally which reminds me how much patience and love it take to be a good parent.
I guess you can be a supermodel today just by building followers. You don't necessarily have to do the work of going to Milan and then to Paris or New York, trying to find the right photographer, artist, or designer to see you.
I like anything with a live audience. I love sitcom work. I hope it comes back in fashion because I really love it. I love single-camera work, too, but in a different way than that live-audience thing, which is really exciting.
Writers tend to hate recurring characters; there's this writer snob thing about it. But I don't have that. I feel like the challenge is always to find a cool and innovative way to do it and, obviously, to not repeat your jokes.
I really don't feel like I'm in any kind of contest. Except, maybe, with myself. Just want to learn and create and grow. Get better all the time with these filmmaking tools. I don't expect perfection from myself. Just progress.
I remember telling people I booked this job; they were like, 'What is it called?' I was like, 'Peaky Blinders,' and they were like, 'What?' It sounds ridiculous, but I like it because there's an instant intrigue about the name.
And it blew my mind when I started to get wind of the fact that they actually liked me being around. That was humbling, because Kentucky basketball is a big deal, and I am not the biggest fan - I am just the most notorious one.
I was covered in scars from the beatings, and she used to say it was a hockey... She'd apologize. She was on pain. I understand that now, but you don't when you are three and four and you're being beaten to death with a hoover.
But, it has something to do with having belief in a human future and what that human future is. What is the future of humanity? How does this whole experiment not self-destruct with the environment and everything else going on?
I've always had the perspective that roles come into my life when I need them most and sort of teach me lessons. The same can be true of films, films are released into society to aid in a lesson, inspire people, comfort people.
I've learned to think in terms of having a long career. Actors can have very long careers that last until the day we die, but there will be moments when you'll feel like you're a failure or when you're disappointed in yourself.
When I was seven, I was allowed to be an extra in 'Parenthood,' which was amazing. But then I kind of got addicted to it, and my parents didn't want me to want to act. They felt that would be putting your kid in an adult world.
It's not what you spend but how you wear it that counts. The key is often to dress up inexpensive basics with accessories. Something like a beautiful designer bag or belt can make everything else look richer and more luxurious.
Any scene I've ever played where I've thought people who watch it had experienced something like that - for example, people who've had to deal with losing a parent - I want to do it as respectfully as possible for those people.
There were some jobs I wanted that weren't necessarily right for me at the time. The ones I thought I'd never get, I got. As long as I am doing the best work I can possibly do at any given time, I can't do any better than that.
I never dreamt of being in the movies. I was from a very average, I would say, a rather poor family, so my big treat was to work hard all week - I mowed lawns and babysat and washed dishes and washed cars - to go to the movies.
I was born in Copenhagen, and when I was a year old, we moved to Bangalore. I was always a shy person and was happy with just a few friends and that came from my own social awkwardness. I did not know how to make conversations.
I've played the Greek classics; I've played the English classics. I promise you, I'm not complacent, because I hope to be playing all sorts of stuff that I've never played before while the mind - and the body - still functions.
The greatest motivator and leveler in my life has been my yoga practice. It has taught me how to be a grown-up, follow through, give back, be compassionate, be a better mother, wife, daughter, sibling, friend, and just show up.
I've been really lucky. When I decided to go to LA I said I was going to quit modelling and just go and see how I do. In the first two weeks I got three movies. I was so excited I had all my furniture shipped out from New York.
If you make films, you're changing rhythm the whole time. You go from a quiet life to an absolutely turbulent life which is typical of moviemaking. And then you get back to your normal life and you have to have nerves of steel.
I hated Hollywood. It’s a town without pity. Only success counts. I know of no other place in the world where so many people suffer from nervous breakdowns, where there are so many alcoholics, neurotics and so much unhappiness.
I was always the one leading the way in terms of wanting to do acting, singing and dancing. I was lucky that my mother had a very well-adjusted perspective of the world and never pressured me to do anything I didn't want to do.
I went on French television for 20 minutes. It was very embarrassing to have to say, 'I'm not dead. I'm well. I'm not ill, and I don't have AIDS.' I hated doing it, because it was so insulting to those who really did have AIDS.
When you have to play a character that seems to be a relatively decent person and seems to be like yourself, I think the trick in that kind of character, so that you don't become a cliche, is to find where their weaknesses are.
I think the world is ready for people of color to take on more heroic and leading roles, and not always be the sidekick, the nemesis or any sort of stereotype of what a person of color can play typically in a Hollywood picture.
I think you've got to have your feet planted firmly on the ground, especially in this business, and you must not believe things that are said or written about you, because everything gets out of proportion one way or the other.
I get very protective of kids on set. I always make a point of telling kids that anything that makes them feel unsafe or concerned they should just speak up about, and then keep an eye on times when that could present an issue.
One Christmas I had no money, and so I went home and just, like, wrote a poem; I mean, I didn't write them, but I just handed out poems as Christmas presents. Like, 'Here's a Pablo Neruda poem that really made me think of you.'
But really, for me, I tried to find first-person accounts. I tried to read stories from men and women who had survived slavery because it's different when you hear it from their mouths instead of reading it from a history book.
When I left my home to become an actress, my father didn't give me a single penny. I struggled a lot, and they had no idea what I went through. My grandfather even asked me to drop my surname when he learnt I was joining films.
It's a whole series of accidents that makes a show into a hit. A show can be fantastic and still not be a hit. You just have to hit the Zeitgeist at the right moment, and there are so many factors that you're not in control of.
I don't look in the mirror; don't like what I see; never have. I am not my idea of a beauty. Never was. This is not false modesty. I've just never been enamoured of my face, which of course is magnified umpteen times on screen.
Every day, there is a person following me, taking pictures. It's bizarre because I'm just going to the gym or getting a smoothie. I don't have the time or energy to be constantly put together all the time, but that's real life.
In general, working on a horror movie is no different than working on any movie. Turn the camera around and there's 20, 30 people standing around, eating doughnuts, smoking cigarettes between takes, working, like any other set.