Quotes About Actress

I don't like the word celebrity. If I become a good actress and be in movies where I'm expected to be a good actress, who is recognised, that's different to being what I consider to be a celebrity. My job is an actor and that's what I'm passionate about and adore. It's a privilege to be able to do this job for a living.

When I was doing Shakespeare and I had spent a lot of time and effort in trying to become a great Shakespearean actress. That was how I started my career, was in the theater doing Shakespeare. And my ambition was to be a great classical actress. That was what I wanted more than anything. So, I really pursued that in the first four years of my career. And it was an uphill struggle. It really was. Shakespeare's difficult and Shakespeare in a big theater is even more difficult. So, anyway, it was a struggle for me.

What is Camille Paglia doing, writing that an actress as gifted as Anne Heche has the mental depth of a pancake? How many pancake brains could do what Heche did with David Mamet's dialogue in Wag the Dog? No doubt Heche has been stuck with a few bad gigs, but Paglia, of all people, must be well aware that being an actress is not the same safe ride as being the tenured university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

As an actress and just as a person, I've kind of been in a little bit of a bubble. So it was so great for me to see where I could go as an actress and to be around incredible people who are much more experienced than I am, like Harmony [Korine], James [Franco], and Vanessa [Hudgens].

I wasn't even prepared to be an actress. I was 17 when I came out of high school, and suddenly became Miss World and then I became an actress.

I was trained as an actress. But I wasn't a very convincing actress, so I started doing punk poetry and then fell into doing stand-up.

My sister wanted to be an actress, but she never made it. She does live in a trailer. She got halfway. She's an actress, she just never gets called to the set.

I grew up as a child actress, not a child star. I was an actress - big difference.

Why, when I was a child, I didn't say, as most children do, that I was going to become an actress. I felt that I was an actress and no one could have convinced me that I wasn't!

There was no way I could live in Hollywood and not become an actress.

As an actress for most of my life, I am profoundly familiar with poverty.

Don Knotts won five Emmy Awards for Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role by an Actor or Actress in a Series [in Andy Griffith Show] in 1961, 1962, 1963, 1966 and 1967.

I can't be a part of the problem. I hate the idea of a label just as much as anyone else but I'm with who I'm with, I love who I love and I'm if not a better actress than I was yesterday and my personal life should have no effect on that. I think that the injustice of people staying in the closet is more than I can bear with a clear conscience and I couldn't sleep at night if I was a part of that problem, if I was part of the lies.

If you didn't know that I am an actress, I don't think you could tell from my lifestyle. I cook and cook and cook. I like to be with my daughter. She's 16, so of course I bore her.

I like being a mother, and I want to be involved in my work, so I have to make choices. If you're a film actress, your career is from 20 to 45, but you can still dream.

Remember picture books are the closest form of writing to a poem. Even though they don't have to rhyme, they must be poetic. They must be written so the worst actress can read with comfort and expression.

I've reached the point where I really can't care what anyone thinks. Of course, I do. I'm an actress. I'm totally insecure, but I'm trying to stick to my guns about what is important to me, and it doesn't matter what anyone thinks I should or shouldn't do.

The good thing about being shy though as a child is that you become very observant because you're not really actively participating. You're sitting back watching everyone. I think that's really helped me as an actress because I'm good at observing people and then copying them for comic effect.

I think to be an amazing actress, you have to be present, you have to be in the moment and not thinking about other things.

Many people don't understand the difference between a vocation and your own idea about something. A vocation is a call-one you don't necessarily want. The only thing I ever wanted to be was an actress. But I was called by God.

It was my life, playing Juliet. From that moment on I was convinced I was going to be an actress. That was all I really wanted to do.

My dad was an actor, and my older sister is an actress, and so I very much remember thinking, "Well, of course I'll do that as well." But I never imagined myself as an actor who would be in films. I always only thought of myself being in a play or a musical and maybe the odd episode of [U.K. '80s TV drama] Casualty. My backup plan was to do something with children, to start a nursery school or work with underprivileged kids. And I still dream of maybe doing that in some way. I've always got children in my house, always.

It was not easy for my mother, being a struggling actress and raising a child. We were these two sort of vagabonds, never knowing where the money was going to come from. She always says she couldn't afford a babysitter, which is why she put me on the stage.

When you're an actress you are in a very specific position, cerebrally, I would think you know. You are a thinking person but you are in a certain perception of the world between really being conceptual and completely stupid. So you are in between, with a lot of intuition and instinct. And that's not completely being intellectual because I think intuition is more blurred. It comes from intuition. Instinct. More than really reasoning.

As a black actress you've got to work doubly hard. But it doesn't ever get me to the point where I give up on myself. It just motivates me to be more prepared, focus and disciplined. That's why I care so much about doing black films and making sure that we represent and are represented correctly.

I think the performances that really communicate with me are the ones where I don't feel like I'm watching someone and thinking: "They're doing some really good acting." It's when I'm literally completely consumed by the story-telling and the actor or actress is evoking something in me. I think that's so powerful and cinema and TV has so much power.

I'm an actress, I live in L.A., I work in Hollywood. But I've learned that if you're too skinny, they'll say something about it. If you're not skinny enough, they'll say something about it. I just try to feel good in my own skin as much as I can.

Until 45 I can play a woman in love. After 55 I can play grandmothers. But between those ten years, it is difficult for an actress.

Being an actress is to be in tune with the fantasies of a man. What woman never dreamt of that?

The impetus behind going to graduate school was a year after graduating from college spent in Dallas working at the dog food factory and Bank America and not having met success in my chosen field, which at that point was being an actress.

I hope the English-speaking world can see that I'm not only an Israeli actress.

All you have to do is to look like crap on film and everyone thinks you're a brilliant actress. Actually, all you've done is look like crap.

I went through the process of auditioning like every other struggling actress in this town.

The good thing about being an actress is that it's very children-friendly. I can work for three months and then I can have six months off. And then I can work for six months and have six months off.

When I first became an actress, I expected to do regional and classical theater; I just love the whole creative process.

Education is huge for me. I went to public school until I turned thirteen, and was lucky enough to afford college once I became successful as an actress. I cannot believe that quality education costs as much as it does in this country. Ghetto Film School is a remarkable public high school in New York City where students get to learn to express themselves through filmmaking, and have hands-on access to equipment.

The great writers like Chekhov know that tragedy and laughter are just a few steps from each other ... but it took me a long time as an actress to learn that. Actually Arthur Miller taught me in the Seventies. We were making a CBS TV drama of his play Playing for Time about Auschwitz but the characters were laughing. It was a big insight for me to realise that that was what's called gallows humour, in this case worse than the gallows, that humans need to laugh and make jokes in order to survive.

Even though I was performing all the time as an actress and I was doing all of these plays as a kid, there's a vulnerability about being a musician that you don't get [when] you perform somebody else's work.

When you're an actress, there are only a few times you can really get paid. One of them is doing a sequel. They can't fake you or hire another actor to play you.

I have so much love to give. That's why, when I was single, I talked about being married and wanting to have children so much. I have so much love that's been poured into me, by my family, my friends, strangers! Once I put myself on a national platform to be an actress and singer, so much love gets poured into me that I just exude all of that love! So, really, it's just a residual effect of what you guys are giving me. I'm overflowing!

As far as developing a career as an actress, I think it's a fine balance between trying to just work, and also be true to yourself.

For example, the character of Claire in In Dreams wasn't imagined enough by me. Annette Bening is a great actress, and she gave a great performance, but because I hadn't fully written it essentially the character wasn't finished.

My mother wanted to be a teacher when she was young, and my father didn't approve of it, so she fought very hard to become one. And she did it. So when I said I wanted to become an actress, my mother was very supportive. She always said to me, 'There's no such thing as 'can't.

I love Keri Russell. I watched every episode of Felicity, and Waitress is my favorite film from last year. She's just an amazing actress. And I like her voice a lot - it didn't surprise me that she would be doing voiceover work.

I thought that choosing a non-professional was a condition for me, because it would allow Juliette to have a less-professional way of acting. It would challenge her performance as a professional actress.

When I came to America, I told my dad I wanted to be an actress.

What keeps me interested--and it always does--is how can she be a bad actress on film but a good one in reality?

I didn't want to become an actress because the competition with my mother would have been to much to live up to.