Jessica Lange Quotes

It took Sydney Pollack a long time to get me to do Tootsie. I asked myself if I wanted to play some frothy, ditzy character after I had just done Frances. Obviously, I'm thrilled that I did.

Successful model? That's a myth. The year I modeled was the most painful year of my life. Editors would always talk to you in the third person as though you were merely a piece of merchandise.

I worked on my voice for 'Sweet Dreams' but only to match my speaking voice to Patsy's actual singing voice. That was my way into that character.

There was a period of time when I was very political, when I was at the university. It was like the late '60s, early '70s and I was a dissident like everybody else I guess. Now I follow it but there's nothing that really grabs me. The most fascinating thing to me right now is China.

I could be making a lot more money now if I had chosen a different kind of movie, but none of that matters to me... I've done the parts I wanted to do.

There was that feminist myth that we can do everything. I don't think you can.

In families there is always the mythology. My father died when my kids were quite young still, and yet they still tell his stories. That is how a person lives on.

I love being a mother. I loved being a daughter, a sister, a wife. I love being a woman with men. I love having given birth.

To my mind the election was stolen by George Bush and we have been suffering ever since under this man's leadership.

To work on the actual location I think is great. This thing of going to Canada and pretending you're in New York, it's terrible.

I've been thinking a lot about next year, which will be the first time in 25 years that I don't have a child at home.

I am tortured when I am away from my family, from my children. I am horribly guilt-ridden.

I want to live my life with no goals anymore, but just completely free, like I did when I was younger.

Acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness, those are life-altering lessons.

I do love acting. But to work as a photojournalist would have been extraordinary.

Box office success has never meant anything. I couldn't get a film made if I paid for it myself. So I'm not 'box office' and never have been, and that's never entered into my kind of mind set.

Sometimes parts just come along when it's the perfect time for you to do them.

I never shot on sets, but if I was traveling somewhere or on location, I would always have my camera, and I'd always be - it's that kind of fly on the wall approach to photography, though. I don't engage the subject. I like to sneak around, skulk about in the dark.

Don't be absent from your own life.

When you learn not to want things so badly, life comes to you.

I like playing characters who are out there on the edge, where they can explode at any moment or fall off the precipice.

I am coming to the end of acting. I have a list: another stage production, maybe one or two more movies, one more season of American Horror Story. . . and then that is it for me. Because I think that's enough. I want to go out with a bang. . . or should I say, a scare?

It was easier to do Shakespeare than a lot of modern movie scripts that are so poorly written.

I like to work in costumes, makeup, and hair that allow me tremendous freedom.

It's easy to judge, to think we know for certain the right thing to do. Sometimes, it just isn't so clear.

I have always followed the most passionate course.

It is an embarrassing time to be an American. It really is. It's humiliating.

One of the things I love about acting is that it reveals a certain something about yourself, but it doesn't reveal your own personal story.

The thing with psychoanalysis is I know basically what happened in my childhood. I know where things went wrong and I know what my mother said at one point and what my father said at one point.

I have been a waitress, and I was a damn fine waitress too, let me tell you.

For me, acting was always a way to explore emotions - to dip into the well and really try to reach rock bottom down there. That was the most exciting part of it. I hadn't found anything that really allowed me to do that until I came upon acting.

The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.

The worst is when I talk myself into something. Sometimes you take things because you want to work with a certain actor, or you want to work with a director, even if the script or the part's not that great.

At a certain age, death becomes familiar to you-or a loss becomes familiar-the tragedies that are more commonplace in life.

I had a big family - two older sisters and a younger brother. My family was like moving around a lot so I lived in a lot of small towns. My father was very restless.

Because Shakespeare's language is so expansive, we're under this misconception that it's difficult. But I discovered that it's easy because it's so brilliantly written. The words are perfect, and the language is intelligent and very emotional.

Sometimes the odds are against you-the director doesn't know what the hell he's doing, or something falls apart in the production, or you're working with an actor who's just unbearable.