Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't like to intellectualize about my acting. I don't sit around and study the pages of a script over and over again. I don't worry whether the period is contemporary or three hundred years ago. Human beings are all alike. The main thing in acting is honesty, to feel the humanity and get to the essence of the character. You can't put anything into a character that you haven't got within you.
Ewan McGregor and I said this to each other after we saw The Ghost Writer. Every time Roman Polanski did a "No, no, no!," he was right. It was really as if a sculptor was asked to sculpt the embodiment of despair - that was the attitude he would strike. But as with every sort of inspiring teacher you ever had who was strict and scary, when you get it right, the sun comes out, and it's worth it.
Today, we're struggling a lot, both men and women, with finding out what we're supposed to be. Like when you go on a first date, I always find it incredibly difficult to figure out whether I should reach for the check or not. I don't want to presume anything, but I don't want to be a ball-buster. A lot of rules are thrown up into the air and I think that maybe more than anything, we're confused.
My tutor was a film director on the side, and she introduced me to film. She then put me in one of her short films, and it came out of that. That's when I fell in love with the process of making a film. After that, I was about 15 and I was like, "This is what I've gotta do." So, I started taking acting lessons, and then I applied to college to do acting. I got an agent, and it all just happened.
Women are so often segregated to their sexuality, and how they appear. In fact, there's a lot of talk, even now, I think in most jobs this is true... people will say, when a woman rises to power, they ask, 'who did she sleep with?' You know, it couldn't possibly be about her acumen, it couldn't possibly be about her intelligence. It's got to be about her body, because that's how women get ahead.
I don't want to be a basket case on set. I try to sort of quiet all of that, all those thoughts, kinda just let yourself be aware of them when you're preparing to do the work but then once you get there you have to feel as free as possible. Anything that I perceived as something that ran the risk of stressing me out, I just left outside the studio doors because I didn't want to undermine myself.
I think London is made up of tiny little pockets and villages, and lots of little sub-cultures. So, especially for an actor, it's a brilliant place to live because you've got inspiration all the time, wherever you are. You can turn a corner and you'll be in mansion houses with beautiful gardens and Ferraris, and you'll turn back on yourself and it'll be ghetto land. But I think that's brilliant.
Kristen is really focused and really quiet, as an actress. She just does her thing, but she's cool. I like her. I know a lot of people have mixed comments about her, but I think she's a rad person. She's just focused on what she's doing, as an actress, and she wants to pick the right roles, and she's committed to her craft. She's really cool. We got along. There weren't any tensions or anything.
Scarlett, from the ashes of the war-ravaged land at Tara, remembering what she was taught by her father in happier times: "As God is my witness, as God is my witness, they're not going to lick me! I'm going to live through this, and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again - no, nor any of my folks! If I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill! As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."
It's so important to be thankful and grateful for any and every opportunity that we have, especially in this business. I learned some wonderful things there. I learned that it doesn't matter how tired you are, you always hang up your wardrobe. That was a wonderful place for me. I would sit in my dressing room and stuff envelopes with my wedding invitations. That place has a real reverence for me.
I saw The Sound of Music again recently, and I loved it. Probably it's a more valuable film now than when it first came out, because some of the things it stood for have already disappeared. There's a kind of naive loveliness about it, and love goes by so fast ... love and music and happiness and family, that's what it's all about. I believe in these things. It would be awful not to, wouldn't it?
At the MTV Movie Awards, I was wearing a dress, and that red carpet is outside, and Victoria Justice was going before me on the red carpet. Apparently she's like the biggest star in the world, so everybody was just like 'Victoria! Victoria!' so I am just standing there, and a couple of reporters were just like 'Hello.' And then my skirt just flies up, and I was like 'Take that, Victoria Justice!'
The thing that I've learned is to stay ready to be ready, and I tell this to young people all the time. You don't have time to get ready. So, what that means to me is if you don't like your hair, your weave is wack, your teeth need fixing, if your attitude needs adjusting and you need therapy, you really want to lose 10 pounds - whatever that is for you - then you need to work on it starting now.
I pray everywhere--in the shower, on a plane, in traffic, you name it. When I feel like I have had enough, I will literally take a knee, bow my head, and beg God for help and strength. I know not to beg Him for patience, because then He gives me situations in which I have to grow more patient; I learned that lesson! And if I am having a wonderful day, I will stop to thank Him. It's a relationship.
The most important thing in my life, and the thing I try to focus on, is to try not to live a life of cruelty. That means trying to make sure I look people in the eye when I meet them. Sometimes you jump in a taxi, or maybe you only have two minutes with someone, and you never see them again. I try to always look them in the eye and have a real experience of what it is to communicate with someone.
Brian De Palma was one of the rare directors who wanted us all to go to dailies. It was like a party. After shooting The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, we'd all walk over together, at like 5 or 6 o'clock, to the little theater. And we'd sit down and watch the dailies from like, the day before. And John Travolta, whenever I came onscreen, he was just laughing hysterically. He just thought I was a riot.
Film and TV is a very hard profession to enter into if you don't have the ability to take a long period of time without making money so you can write, direct or raise financing, or work your way up, often with unpaid internships. It's hard to get into without a lot of connections. You end up with a lot of white people from privilege making films. So we're seeing a lot of the same kinds of stories.
After Blood Simple, everybody thought I was from Texas. After Mississippi Burning, everybody thought I was from Mississippi and uneducated. After Fargo, everybody's going to think I'm from Minnesota, pregnant, and have blonde hair. I don't think you can ever completely transform yourself on film, but if you do your job well, you can make people believe that you're the character you're trying to be.
The sexual revolution... it was the first time I had read anything that came close to describing those feelings of being outside of my body, feeling the shame, all of it, that I really was able to connect to in that book. So it sort of blew my mind. I was also listening to Tori Amos at the same time, so I was like, "Wait, what's happening?!" It was all a part of that, probably when I was, like, 13.
In Milly Barranger, Margaret Webster has found the perfect biographer. In Margaret Webster, Milly Barranger has found her perfect subject. She brings to vivid life a fascinating and important theater figure whose public and private lives were of equal interest. In this carefully researched book, Webster's colleagues, lovers, and friends shine as brightly as she did. I wish she were here to read it.
For me to get the support and the love and response we did from critics, but to also be at Trader Joe's and have women come up to me and cry and hug me is on another level. That makes you take a step back because there are genuine emotions at stake. People were truly on a journey with her. This story opened up week by week like a flower. It was just a magical season, and I'm so happy I got to do it.
I don't know if directors go, 'Hey! We've got another suicide-let's call Robin Tunney! It's weird, but they're all different, and I guess it gives the characters some kind of power... At least I play women who are strong enough to take the power into their own hands! And kill themselves! So many women in films just shoot themselves in the head anyway, because they're not really there for any reason.
There was a girl that bullied me years ago, and I was going through, you know, just the standard Instagram wormhole on her account, going way back into her photos and, yes, ended up liking something and I was like, "No!" I just wanted to disconnect my Instagram - Oh, and then she wrote me a message saying, "It's so great to see you doing well." I was like, "Nope, nope, you don't get to say that now!"
It’s true that the mind is where all ideas are born, but the body is the tool that translates and expresses those ideas to the wider world. It is nothing but a vehicle for our greater creative purpose but if we don’t give it fuel and keep it in good working order it instead becomes another obstacle to transcend, a physical one, as well as the many million fictitious mental ones that society presents.
To stand together against homophobic, sexist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic and racist agendas. I’m an optimist and I can’t help but feel hopeful about the future of film - especially looking at all the beautiful people in this room. Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.’ I would like to encourage everyone in this room to please speak up.
What I point out to you is only that you shouldn't allow yourselves to be confused by others. Act when you need to, without further hesitation or doubt. People today can't do this... what is the affliction? Their affliction is their lack of self-confidence. If you do not spontaneously trust yourself sufficiently, you will be in a frantic state, pursuing all sorts of objects, unable to be independent.
There's lots of sides. The CD doesn't really create a mood. It creates more of a journey. It starts out with a simple bluegrass tune, sort of melancholy and sad, like "Lovin' and Lyin'," then it's sexy and there's some funny songs in there where I'm talking, like "Designated Drunk." There's a humor side, a sexy side, but there's also a pretty sad side, the country side. It's the backwards side of me!
There was a guy with mental illness in the middle of the street just yelling and hollering. I have a number that I can call - it's not 911 - to tell them, "You need to help this man get out of the street." But you have to be that person, you have to pick up the phone, you have to do it; you can't just walk by and act like they're not people. They're somebody's kid, somebody's dad, somebody's brother.
I just love the idea of witches, in general. The whole concept of witches was to keep down the feminine rise in power that was happening, at the time. They created this concept of witches, so that they could burn women at the stake and keep them in their place, and now we've turned it around to empower women. That's very ironic. If they only knew that they created a weapon for us to use against them.
You do remember things that people say in movies. You remember particular lines and things that are funny. But, you also remember really strong images. Images have a way of bypassing your brain and hitting you emotionally. There are so many things from movies that are remembered, that are just looks on people's faces or incredible vistas or beautiful pictures. That is a very important part of cinema.
We're still at a point where women [directors] aren't allowed to be mad visionaries. We have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we're responsible, that we can handle it, that we've got all our ducks in a row . . . most women who direct always come in on budget, always come in on schedule, and if they were wild and irresponsible it would not be put down to brilliance, but to a general flakiness.
I was powerless over my childhood but the coping strategies that I developed, to survive, all of which were creative and brilliant and got me through, as an adult those became my defects of character. Those became my shortcomings, control and all that kind of stuff... and that's my responsibility. I was a blameless child in what happened in the home; I take responsibility for my behaviors as an adult.
I got a part opposite Edward G. Robinson in a play called Middle of The Night, which Paddy Cheyafsky had written. It played for a long time because everybody just loved Edward G. Robinson, everybody in New York wanted to see it. John and I were married at the time and put into a position where I was working very long evening hours and he was working in the daytime and so there was a lot of spare time.
At 7 in the morning, Rob Zombie calls. I just let the machine answer it, because I'm like, "Who's calling me at 7 in the morning?" It's Rob leaving this message, going, "That was the best birthday present I ever got in my whole life. I looked at Halloween script from cover to cover. No one else will ever get their fingers on this. It's wrapped in plastic. It's going in my vault. I love it. Thank you."
I do feel there is a certain amount of distance and apathy that's created when you feel like there's a distance between you and the other people. So it's very easy to... when you have an app that sets it up where you very clearly swipe somebody's face off of your screen because you don't like the way they look, you're asking people to not appeal to their best selves. You're asking people to be brutal.
I've gone into auditions and I think they have an assumption about me when they see my photo and then I open my mouth and they say, 'Where exactly are you from? And you were born in Ethiopia? But you're Irish, but you also kind of sound English. That's really strange.' They want to put you in a box in LA, that's how they tend to do it there, so if you don't fit in that box, it makes it more difficult.
What would seem like an innocuous meat tenderizer turned out to be the biggest fear of every PA and producer - everyone on set. You know, it's dangerous, because you're running around and you're taking close swings at people with something that really could kill them. It's not like you have a gun with no bullets that you're doing cinematically. You actually have a weapon that you're swinging at people.
When you come from a privileged household, we've been able to buy monthly feminine products since the first day that we got our periods. A lot of women out there have absolutely no means to be able to afford something that seems as simple and as much of a no-brainer as a feminine product. I think Monthly Gift has a really brilliant cause - giving underprivileged girls free feminine products every month.
When we get to A League Of Their Own, I have to be Geena Davis' little sister who wants to be like her and wants everything that she has and is jealous and upset and mad. Well, that was easy. I mean, she has an Academy Award. I think I can be upset about that. She's 99 feet tall and she's drop-dead gorgeous and she's all feminine and pretty. I had to pretend I couldn't run as fast as her. That was hard.
We may have created this projection of what God should be, as this judge or test, but the fact is, the only way we know about God is by knowing ourselves in some way. So God must be in ourselves-you can't deny that. If you say that God is somewhere else, which is what a lot of religions say, I just can't deal with it. I guess it's the difference between Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism, or something.
I am the first one in my family to go to college and I felt a great responsibility when I was at school, because my family was making so many sacrifices for me to be there. I was raised by a single mother, my grandmother got on the plane and helped me move to New York and moved me into the dorm. It was just a big moment, and, yes, it was my dream to be an actress, but also I didn't want to let them down.
Whenever there's a red carpet event coming up my trainer in LA that I see, I always come to her like three days before and go, 'Can you make me really thin in three days?' She's always like, 'If you come to me consistently all throughout the year, then yes I can. When you come to me with three days and ask to lose 10 pounds it's just not going to happen.' I'm like, 'Do your best. Please. Make me skinny.'
Everybody is in your business, gossiping and being mean spirited. It's different. Sometimes I'm like, "Do I want to do this?," because it's not about the art anymore. It's a struggle. There's part of me that wants to share my gift, which is art, and if I don't, am I taking away something that the Creator gave me to share? At the same time, I don't want to be a part of feeding the dumbing down of society.
Growing up, I was the weird, theatrical kid who always tried to make people be in my plays. I've always loved comedy, but when it came time to figure out what I was going to go to school for, my parents were like, "Acting?! I don't think so. No." It took me a while to get the courage to pursue it. I had to do it in secret for a little bit, and then when I got married and was out on my own, I went for it.
I didn't know how to check other people's feeds. When I started Instagram, it was just me posting! But then at some point, like eight months ago, I realized I could see what other people were sharing. It was so exciting and so fun, but it was like I'd already gotten into the rhythm of sharing and not worrying about what it was like compared to other accounts. I think that was kind of protective, in a way.
Frankly speaking, I hate comparisons. Two individuals are doing two different films, playing two different characters: how can you compare them? It is not fair to get into ratings. It really doesn't matter what I think about other actresses; what matters is what the directors think of them when they are casting them in a project, because I think it's the director who's behind a successful piece of cinema.
When I think of [my relationship with Gable], considering the way it started, it was curious. We became devoted to each other. We weren't lovers-he was in love with Carole Lombard...we eventually became more like siblings. Nobody believes that and you can understand why...but our relationship was unique. Oh he sometimes gave me the macho routine when people were watching but he changed when we were alone.
I can't emphasize more to you that I had the luxury, the privilege of living up here in Vancouver. I feel like I'm on vacation, and I get to work, as well. I don't think I need a vacation after working. I'd just like to really look with a positive outlook in being here in such a beautiful city. I really am feeling lucky on the days off that I have, that I'm here on vacation in Vancouver, British Columbia.
I don't feel like I possess a particular political intelligence, and when I read work that does, I feel like somebody else is going to have the right political thing to say. As a citizen, I feel an enormous need to respond, and immediately post-election, I felt like, What is my work worth? Should I quit what I'm doing and go work on the 2018 election now? How is what I'm putting into the world meaningful?
Robin [Williams] was a world treasure. As we mourn his tragic death, we must remember him for the great waves of laughter that he was able to illicit from us, how his humor and insights - though they came from a place of pain and uncertainty - connected us and reminded us of how flawed and fragile...how human we are. How we are capable of moments of inspired transcendence and others of unspeakable despair.