![]() |
||||||
![]() |
Enjoy these Actress Quotes from some of the most famous Actresses ever. Take a look at Actors Quotes Part 2 Acting gave me the opportunity to do outrageous things. It allowed me to be sad, happy, angry and lustful even if it was just vicariously. I was so lucky. I was very broke and I was taking classes at Lee Strasberg's Institute and I saw a 3 X 5 index card on the bulletin board advertising for college-aged girls for a film. That was Animal House. As far as pacing the shoot is concerned, I know when I've got it. I don't think there's any reason to take ten takes unless you need them. I took an acting class for 10 seconds before I played a lead in a student movie. I showed the film to an agent who said he would send me on interviews but wouldn't sign me. And I'm not an actress. I don't think I am an actress. I think I've created a brand and a business. As a brunette, I had previously been this serious actress. Then I became a blonde and got to play a completely different, comic role. Actors are trusting souls, and we must go by gut-level instinct, even after our agents and business managers weigh all the odds. After being in the business for such a long time, I've done everything but rodeo and porno. I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that. I am quite surprised, that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about The Miracle Worker. We're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world... I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet. Acting is like a high wire act. Your margin for error is very slim. Acting is a matter of giving away secrets. --Ethel Barrymore I feel there are two people inside me - me and my intuition. If I go against her, she'll screw me every time, and if I follow her, we get along quite nicely. I always have to sort of fall in love with my characters. When I work on these characters, I just try to make them very real and grounded in the world. It's just the regular work that I do on a character with the director, trying to find out who this woman is and what's her backstory. There is always one person on the set who has a lot of anxiety, an actor who is really intense and has to stay in character and holds himself away from the rest of us. Acting is not about being famous, it's about exploring the human soul. Hollywood is like Picasso's bathroom. Here's the thing - you can't be careful about what you pick because what looks like on paper is going to be a great script has often turned out to be a disaster, so there's no way to know what's going to work or to pick the right thing. It's hard to keep a play alive moment-to-moment, you know? But there's another part of it that I really love, which is that you never know. I do like to work with young directors because it's such a difficult business that I think after directors have been around a while sometimes, not always, but sometimes their passion gets siphoned off because they get hurt. 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. If it's true that men are such beasts, this must account for the fact that most women are animal lovers. Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life. If you risk nothing, then you risk everything. I didn't care about being the 'star.' I just wanted to make a living and have a consistent career. I enjoy doing independent films more, only because there's more freedom. There's not as many cooks tampering with what you are trying to do. As an actress, it appeals to me because I love the idea of playing those in-between moments, the sort of behavioral stuff that one might not normally see. So many people are called but few serve as actors, you know what I mean? I often say the last role I played that really touched me and where I was able to access what I really am was Bonnie, which is kind of sad when you think how early in my career that was. I have always wanted to act ever since I was a little girl. I would put a blanket under my shirt and pretend that I was pregnant. Then, I would go through childbirth. I get it now; I didn't get it then. That life is about losing and about doing it as gracefully as possible... and enjoying everything in between. I joined the Actors Studio and began to work with Lee Strasberg, and that changed my work. As actors, the thing we have to fight, more than even the business part of making movies, is boredom. As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people don't. My interest in acting was overwhelming, but I wasn't thinking, "I'm going to California and I'm going to become a movie star." Things were different then. I lived just for the moment, and whatever happened, happened. I'm an assistant storyteller. It's like being a waiter or a gas-station attendant, but I'm waiting on six million people a week, if I'm lucky. But the reason I became, why I wanted to be in the business was because there was Midnight Cowboy. I don't understand people who like to work and talk about it like it was some sort of goddamn duty. Doing nothing feels like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect. Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. Don't like small talk, love rainy days. An actress can only play a woman. I'm an actor, I can play anything. Acting is like playing, while directing is really fun, sort of like an orgy. A big part of being an actress specifically is feeling entitled to your artistic opinion, feeling that it means something, and being able to stand by it. A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there. All those days of waiting on tables until I could get a role on Broadway, all that time going to school taking lessons, and all those years of being a nobody following a dream-and now here it is. All I ever wanted to be was happy. Increasingly, stars are recruited from the ranks of professional models, with the result that today's starlets are better dressed and better groomed than ever before, though it is doubtful if they are better actresses. Acting is a nice childish profession - pretending you're someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself. I'm afraid of being lazy and complacent. I'm afraid of taking myself too seriously. If there's a message, it's that the unlovable and unattractive parts of ourselves should be embraced. The only real currency between people is what happens when they're not cool. And I hope people feel OK about not being cool. It's hard for me to get good work. You don't see me more because it's hard for me to find stuff that I want to do. I would love to work more-I really would-but there is not a lot of stuff around and the stuff that is around is not very complicated; it tends to lie a little flat. I like it when you read a script and there's the part that you show to the other characters and then there's the part that only the audience knows. I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free. I just have to keep going back to the core and think that we're all afraid of it and when we're afraid of it, you run to something much easier, something that looks like candy. I have a hard time visualizing anything, which is why I'm not a director, and which is why I try to work with ones I know have a strong idea in mind.
Return from Actress Quotes Part 1 to WILDsound Filmmaking Feedback Events home page |
|||||