Rebecca Hall Quotes

As a child I loved ghost stories.

I was a really pretentious teenager.

To read a character I'm not sympathizing with is generally quite a good, attractive proposition because I've got somewhere to go, I've got work to do, to try to understand why they behave like they behave, to relate entirely and understand them and to be completely emotionally connected. That is much more fun 99 percent of the time.

We cannot talk with [animals] as we can with human beings, yet we can communicate with them on mental and emotional levels. They should, however, be accorded equality in that they should receive both compassion and respect; it is unworthy of us to exploit them in any way.

I suppose the reason why I like acting is because I'm curious about human nature, and the less I know about a character on the page, instinctively, in a way, the better.

If you choose to do both [acting and directing] on a set, than you're admitting that you understand that everyone is in it for the same goal and it's a collaborative experience. You can't really jump into being an actor, and than direct yourself. At some point, you have to be willing to accept other people's opinions. I think that's helpful. If you try to micro-manage and control all of it, than you're probably heading for disaster.

If you act scared, your body produces adrenaline.

Whenever I'm in theatre situations I will go out of my way not to talk about my father, but in the film world I can be really proud of my family and say, 'You know what: my dad's a really, really famous theatre director,' because nobody has any idea.

I've never been desperate to please my father.

You either hear the story and you're curious, and you're sort of sympathetic, or you think, "Ugh, how horrible." That's dehumanizing. How about we take that and turn Christine Chubbuck into a person and it's not about the final act, it's about her life. I felt that really strongly, and I felt a sort of deep sympathy with her. It's also why I do what I do. I want to try to make difficult people somehow relatable.

I've played an awful lot of repressed people.

You either are a good director or you're not.

When we are aligned, everything can flow, and life and yoga becomes effortless.

I don't think that theater is the higher medium, that it's better than film.

I've always had horrible Valentine's Days.

Sometimes you can incubate a character and that can take me a month just sitting on it imagining it, doing everything from sketching it to taking long walks, but sometimes you can see the character immediately. A lot of it is instinctive.

There are a lot of movies about misfits that are quite cool, that kind of glamorize it on some level. I think there are fewer films, certainly with a lady at the center, about the agony of what it's like to feel like you're not accepted, and you're different, and somehow you're weird.

I love film acting - I'm not snobby about it. I don't think that theater acting's a more noble profession. I think they're both very important. I love both. And in my dream world, I'd get to do both forever.

I always look for contradiction in a character.

I think loads of people see acting, when they're kids, as these magical stories that just happen within the context of the film or the play or the cartoon or whatever they're seeing. They don't imagine that there are actually people that go and do that for a living.

The idea that fear can manipulate people and you can use fear in the media to get what you want is happening right now. I think it has a lot of relevance between 2017 and 70's.

A good piece of art raises questions.

Lentil dhal is the only thing I can cook.

One aspect of my mum's personality that has influenced me is her love of Hollywood and the golden era of black-and-white films.

There are people all over the world who like to write fan letters in the voice of their pet: 'Hello, my name is Fifi and I'm a labrador and I think you're great. Paw paw!'

I don't think there's a single person on this planet that doesn't have a day when they feel like they're off, like they're not doing a very good job of being them. We all relate to having highs and lows. Everyone gets depressed.

I quite enjoy cooking but I'm not consistent. I can't follow the recipe book. If something goes well, I'll never make it again, which is completely stupid. It's a one-shot kind of deal.

As I'm sure anyone who's born after the '70s' access point is - is '70s films and '70s culture and there is a kind of a paranoiac atmosphere in that time in America. Yes, it's the golden age of journalism, Watergate, and all the rest of these people making these great breakthroughs - but it's also the moment that "if it bleeds, it leads" becomes mainstream and sensationalizing the news becomes more and more the given. Checking how many numbers you're getting, whatever you can do to get more numbers.

If pressed, I would say I feel British. It's where I grew up and where I choose to live, the culture that I love, but I feel perfectly at home in America, I don't feel like a tourist or anything.

I used to have the most visceral response to having my photo taken. I felt like instantly bursting into tears and running out of the room. I hated all the attention, which is such a stupid thing for an actor to say.

I was the kid that grew up watching Bette Davis films.

Twin Peaks' is my favorite American TV show.

There's always going to be a separate version of you that people will create, and you have no control over it.

I'm very nerdy about my music, and I like interrogating people about what they put on playlists.

When I was 22, I thought I couldn't wear heels because of my height.

My childhood was very colourful, and I am very good friends with both my parents. We have no secrets.

I think acting can be very frustrating, and there's no experience that doesn't make you a better actor.

I don't want to massively slag off Marvel, I don't. Because they have just employed a woman to be their superhero, and so hallelujah.

I don't like talking about myself, if I'm honest.

I'm not consciously avoiding doing a lot of period drama, but I don't really seek it out either.

I think for a long time it seemed like working in an art form and being a feminist meant portraying women in a perfect, angelic light. And there's nothing feminist about that.

One of the great things about the 'Iron Man' franchise is that they employ fascinating actors who don't necessarily do action movies. Before 'Iron Man' you didn't associate Robert Downey, Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow with those kinds of films. There's an emphasis on repartee and wit.

No family is sane, is it?

Feminism is something I think about more when I watch the film, Christine, rather than when I was actually doing it, to be honest with you. But I do think it functions as a sort of interesting feministic critique, because you are seeing a woman who's resolutely incapable of behaving like the kind of woman that's acceptable at the time. She doesn't know how to play the game by everyone else's rules, and it makes you realize that actually there were rules that were functioning for a woman to be a careerist.

I don't want to make vast generalizations about people who go into legal professions, but there are similarities in the barristers that I met and interacted with, in the sense that they tend to be highly eloquent, highly analytical, thinking people who have a very rapid-fire think-before-they-speak button, as it were.

I read everything. I've always got a book on the go and I'm really nerdy about it, I get through books and don't remember anything about them afterwards. But I read all sorts, from classic to contemporary.

My mum's American. She's from Detroit.

It sounds trite, but I like telling stories.