Laura Linney Quotes

It's always nice when you do something and it's well received as opposed to the other way which God knows happens to everybody. When the good times come around, you take a deep breath, appreciate it, but not take it too seriously.

For me to have the opportunity to stay with one character for, God willing, a long period of time, is really exciting.

The basic laws of good acting are the same, but everything about the experience is different-your job responsibility, the time you spend on it.

I think everyone's journey through this crazy, weird, wild, wonderful area of work named acting is really their own. And if you're going for something that isn't yours, you're wasting time. You could be focused on your own work instead of thinking about somebody else.

Some people's personalities are so compelling that they command attention.

When your life is being threatened there's an instinctive urge to fight. You fight for the time you have, for your relationships.

What I love about a play is that it's such an investment because only time can create a lot of what happens onstage.

I think the way we talk about cancer has really evolved. I remember the way my grandmother used to talk about it, like a death sentence, no-one would even mention the word.

The goal seems to me at times just to be business first.

When you tell people, your world changes, your identity changes and people treat you differently. And then, not only do you have to deal with your own emotional response to what's going on, but you take on everybody else's emotional response.

I don't think you should exploit your own pain.

Our culture is set up on a feud mentality, or a "Housewives" mentality, that women just fight. And it's such a shallow way to exist as far as our evolution is concerned, and our culture is concerned. It's fun to watch women fight, in a storytelling way, but in the world, women shouldn't be seen as a threat to other women.

I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side.

Comedy is a way to make sense of chaos. It's a way of dealing with things that are overwhelming, that threaten you; it's a way to survive and get closer to the truth.

People have to look to the right places for guidance. Looking at a certain type of entertainment shouldn't be where you go for guidance. To zone out, have a laugh, sure - but it's not a great example on how to navigate on a journey. There are other places to look.

I know that actors and actresses have a great reputation for being very, very selfish, and in some cases, that's very true. But in the theater I find it doesn't help you to be selfish. You sort of have to be selfless in the theater, and the more selfless you are - that doesn't mean don't take care of yourself - but the more you sort of surrender to the work, I find, the better the work is. That's just my experience.

I had learning disabilities, and I couldn't express myself in the written word.

But I've also spread my net very wide. If there's one thing that I've done on purpose it's to take whatever job, so long as it's interesting and challenging, whether it's theatre, radio, TV or film.

The entertainment industry is terrified of silence.

With big, emotional roles it's very easy, especially if you've grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character.

Tanning is tricky, because a lot of people just look orange.

I hope that anyone I worked with wouldn't exploit our relationship.

I'm always curious, but I'm learning things I never thought I'd learn. I get to travel to places I never thought I'd go.

When you're dying, you're liberated to do what you want to do. You give yourself permission. I think everyone's experience with a terminal disease is so deeply personal and unique to the person, the context in which they're living and the relationships that they have.

At school I was always trying to con my teachers into letting me act out book reports instead of writing them.

Where I did feel a difference is learning to just work in a different way so that your resources are not completely depleted so that you don't have anything to give to your child when you go home, and fortunately I've been working long enough that I know how to make that shift so that I don't compromise my work or compromise my relationships; not compromising parenting is really the biggest difference.

You have a lot more to give, the older you get. And you want to give it. I mean, some people want to give it. But there is a desire to pass down, to have a hand in the past and a hand in the future. There's a continuum.

I know what people want to hear is the connection with the son, Roger, when you have a child. I would love to tell that there was an epiphany as to what it is to be a mom, but I didn't feel any difference there.

Theater is the foundation of how I live my life, actually. My father was a playwright, so I was around it all the time and loved to talk shop with him, just loved it. And basically everything that I hold to be good and true and worthy, I learned in the theater. So not even just about the work, but just about life. Discipline, problem solving, creativity, how to get along with people.

My castings sort of go in phases. There'll be several icy professional parts - a lawyer or a cop. And then there'll be the intelligent-but-wounded group and then the period things. It goes in sequence.

What I hope in my ideal world is that with each project, I'll either get to work with a really great script that would force me to grow, or work with a really great actor who will make me better.

A magnetic personality doesn't necessarily indicate a good heart.

The (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) stories were great, for one. The thing that makes him a remarkable character is how he can withstand all of these different interpretations and different styles and, that's what makes a classic character a classic character; they keep coming back and you see them in a new way every time.

I certainly didn't have a nanny.

Most scripts are written to be green lit. They're not written to be acted. And a lot of writers with the greatest intention in the world don't write for actors. They don't understand the architecture of what an actor needs to get from point A to point B.

I have a bag with a toothbrush and toothpaste and all the things I might need during the day. I call the bag my trailer. Sometimes you don't have a trailer, so that's my trailer.

Some big movies are terrific, and some aren't. They're made for different reasons, and they have different impacts and they're very different experiences making them. But if they're good, if you're with good people, then hooray.

I get very, very, very irritable with people who complain about getting old, because I know a lot of people who would gladly trade places with us. I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not saying it doesn't hurt your feelings, I'm not saying it's not painful - and physically as well as mentally and spiritually - and it's frightening at times. However, people have really lost perspective, and it's a really bizarre topic of conversation that it's become a cultural peg in our world that aging is a bad thing. It's not logical to me.

Ask "why" until there is no more "why."

I get cold - really cold - when I travel.

People can't really place me. They're not really sure who I am. Sometimes they think I'm Helen Hunt. Sometimes they think I'm Laura Dern.

We all have a limited amount and that it's a privilege to grow old. That's something that I think a lot of people have forgotten in this very fast-paced world where youth is overly celebrate.

I'm not someone who likes to have my picture taken, let alone see it plastered all over the place.

Fame didn't happen to me in my 20s, it has been a gradual thing which probably makes it easier to deal with.

My family is from the South, and I can remember all those ladies I grew up with, like my great-aunts, who had handkerchiefs. There's something sweet about them.

I grew up in Manhattan and, since my father was a playwright, all I ever wanted to be was a stage actress.

Traits like humility, courage, and empathy are easily overlooked - but it's immensely important to find them in your closest relationships.

There's something grueling but very appealing about rough, to-the-bone material in a low budget context. There's less between you and the material. There are less people. There is less time. There's often less technology. You have to concentrate very intensely, and you jump in a little deeper because there's nothing in your way... but there are challenges.