Maggie Gyllenhaal Quotes

Some people would say you need what you need to work, but I need very little to work, because I learned how to make movies on tiny movies. It's all kind of easy for me.

I remember people saying, "Believe me, everything in your life is going to change..." And I thought, "Why? That's such a bourgeois way of thinking." And then you have a child and yes, everything changes. It affects the way we live, what we do, and where we go - everything. And I wouldn't have in any other way.

I need very little to work, because I learned how to make movies on tiny movies. It's all kind of easy for me.

Having an education is invaluable.

I don't think there are that many parts I could say unequivocally "I would not play that," but there's lots of parts I read and I think, "I don't really want to do that. I don't really think that's how women act."

I'm still trying to figure out what the right line is between myself and the people I play. Sometimes I go too far one way or too far the other.

You're invited to tons of parties, and you'll wear these shoes and that dress, and it can be enticing, but I think it also sucks you dry. If you do it a little, sure, it's fun, but too much and you start to lose your footing.

Ten years ago, it was really difficult for a young actress to walk onto a set and disagree with the director and having that be OK and have a conversation about it and everyone be cool with it.

Honestly, I'm always aware of the political implications of the movies that I make.

I am looking for movies that are actually about something and that are questioning something. Movies that are provocative in some way and I am also looking for roles that I think will force me to grow or learn something about myself or the world in order to play them well.

I feel there is no shortage of real interesting women's roles. But I found them and did all of them just now.

I have a couple of girlfriends who are like healing. We take care of each other. They know when I need to be taken care of.

I would like to have a home in the country that I could go to. First in this country and the other in the Mediterranean.

I feel so gratified about having finished college. I learned how to articulate myself. It gave me confidence more than anything. And also the ability to analyze the text.

To get people emotionally involved in something intellectual and political is important.

One of the things I think is really problematic about something like [government] spyware is that it isn't transparent - because of that anonymity and that secrecy, there aren't laws to regulate it.

I don't even notice the advertisement that comes up on my screen. I'm a smart person and it's just something I've just blacked out because it doesn't seem right to me.

I'm 37 and I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55. It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made me feel angry, and then it made me laugh.

Mainstream Hollywood makes a few good movies a year. And in order to be in one of those, you have to be one of five people. Hollywood makes many bad movies too, which I'm not interested in being a part of. But there are only a few good independent movies a year, and many, many bad ones. I want to be in good movies, and I want people to see them.

Who can I trust? You have to invest in somebody and chances are you're probably going to invest in somebody who's going to deceive you. I've been conned a couple of times, but now I'm a little more savvy.

I'm pretty good at indulging myself. I'm about to go travel for a week. I like to get massaged, go into steam rooms. I take care of myself.

It's a hard life to have sex with eight to 10 men a night. That's hard physically, let alone emotionally.

I would like to do a big movie that many, many people see but I just know I would be miserable if it didn't have something to it.

I want to have some effect on the way the world works in whatever way I can, and I also want to have the power to help get the movies that I think are important made.

I said to Ramona [my daughter] once ... you should never look yourself up on the Internet. It's something I've learned.

I don't see that many movies lately that are actually about something, that are trying to challenge something about the way that people interact.

Sometimes I'll read things in the script and think, "That's not how humans behave," or "I don't understand how to do that role and make it seem like I'm not some kind of strange alien or on a sitcom." I don't get it, and when I feel that way, I have to listen to my instinct. My initial instinct does lead me in a direction that I can trust.

If you're going to play a hooker in a movie, the movie has to have the perspective, of course, that it isn't such a great thing. Probably the only way to really play a hooker well is to believe you're doing something that's good. But at the same time, the movie can't have that point of view.

Being a mother has absolutely forced me. You have to write things down and have systems for all of it. And then you set up systems and you realize they don't work.

I made a movie where I played a girl that just got out of prison and we shot it very very quickly but very intensely-that took me a long time to get over.

Someone who's 26, 27, has a very different relationship to sex than someone who's 30.

These past couple of years have been about learning to not sabotage myself in a subtler way - for instance, even just by putting moisturiser on when I get out of the shower. Learning to honour myself and believing that I'm worth taking care of.

I'm playing somebody who is a recovering drug addict who got out of prison. It takes place in 2 weeks-the 1st 2 weeks I'm out of prison.

I liked that idea. Someone who's trying to perform herself and not succeeding.

I don't feel that way now. I don't want to make movies for the 10 people who feel exactly the same way about the world that I do. I want to make movies that many, many people see, and I want to say something that I believe is important in a way that people who don't agree with me can hear. And that involves making different kinds of choices, but it's not like a compromise that I'm making. It's that something else interests me, something else is appealing to me.

There was something to me that was really compelling about that woman, already knowing she couldn't get pregnant. When I made that movie I was maybe 24, and to be 24 and already know you can't get pregnant, that was really interesting to me.

There is a need, especially right now in America, to be a bit provocative.

If I've learned anything as a mom with a daughter who's three, I've learned that you cannot judge the way another person is raising their kid. Everybody is just doing the best they can. It's hard to be a mom.

Acting is really important to me, so I think it would be really hard for me to do something I didn't believe in.

I think most human beings, even if you're in a situation that's constricting or complicated or hard, they try to survive.

A play is much easier to maintain your personal life with because if you're rehearsing, you're working like from 11 to 6 or 11 to 5 and you get to have your whole morning and your whole evening. When you're doing the play, you have all day.

I really want my kids to feel, is that they can be themselves in the world.

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.

What I think is new is the wealth of roles for actual women in television and in film. That's what I think is revolutionary and evolutionary.

Now, there are roles which are capturing a vibrant moment in an older woman's life. There was a time when those interesting roles stopped at 28. A few years ago we would have been finished by our age.

Every actor has to find space where they are free, in order to do good work.

Sometimes things go really well, and sometimes they don't, and it's not ultimately the most important thing.

I've noticed a lot of people talking about the wealth of roles for powerful women in television lately. And when I look around the room at the women here and I think about the performances that I've watched this year, what I see actually are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not. Sometimes sexy and sometimes not. Sometimes honourable and sometimes not. And what I think is new is the wealth of roles for actual women in television and in film. That's what I think is revolutionary and evolutionary and it's what turning me on.