I hope my talent has something to do with it. I just think this business is so crazy. I obviously do the best I can, and the directors I admire see something in me. But this is a strange business, and there are people who are incredibly talented who never make it, who never get these opportunities. So that's why I say I'm lucky. I don't feel that I'm not talented - I think I am talented - but I also think I'm very lucky.
Jennifer Jason LeighWriting, producing and directing, I must say, is incredibly satisfying and gratifying.
Jennifer Jason LeighPeople equate success with youth. And if you haven't had a certain amount of success by a certain time in your life, it's never going to happen. There's a fear about that. So people start lying about their age really young. I've never done that because I think it's so insignificant.
Jennifer Jason LeighI feel like I turned down a lot of things that I wish I hadn't. But you never know when you're younger. I don't have regrets about certain things I turned down. Those films would have required things of me that would have been challenging, and they ended up being really good movies. But I was never a careerist, I never thought in those terms. I'd be like, "Oh, I'm tired. I don't want to work."
Jennifer Jason LeighI loved acting as a kid because I was kind of shy, so it brought me out of myself.
Jennifer Jason LeighI've always done roles that really appealed to me on a gut level and which I found inspiring.
Jennifer Jason LeighYou try to find the internal life, but a lot of it is creating it through physical behavior and figuring out the voice when you create as much of a past as you would in a naturalistic piece. But it's fun, because it's like you're learning something, learning some kind of physical skill.
Jennifer Jason Leigh