Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The point to have a child is to introduce them to this planet that is in some ways dying and hopefully, this new generation, these new untainted brains, will be the people to fix some of these things that this generation can't.
There's obviously something that feels very good about being with a new filmmaker who's very excited, but I also think there's something very comforting in a director who's been around a few times. Both have their pros and cons.
I am becoming more recognisable in some ways, and some aspects of my privacy are going. But there's an upside: I have more opportunity to tell bigger stories and connect with more people. And I really relish that responsibility.
There is beauty in living in a small space, as a child. Some aspects of it are so beautiful, and it's so nice to not see the darkness. But then, in other ways, there's a whole range of experience that's being missed because of it.
My number-one website is brainpickings.org. It opens you up to different authors and gives insights into the literary world. Reading about the love letters novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote to his wife Vera blew my mind. Fascinating.
My identity was tangled up in the parts that I had played since I was a child. I would go through my closet and only see audition clothes: Brie looking older, Brie looking '60s, Brie looking '40s, Brie looking younger in the future.
Any time I was at Trader Joes, and the person bagging my stuff would be like, 'Did I go to college with you? How do I know you?' Then it took awhile, and suddenly people were like, 'Oh, you are the girl from 'United States of Tara.'
You could put me on a stage in front of 100 people, and I could do a tap dance, but one-on-one was really difficult for me. And it took me most of my life to learn how to work with that anxiety, to embrace and be comfortable with it.
The experience of making a movie, you start to see it everywhere. It's just this amazing mechanism that your brain does because it just so badly wants to be helpful and keep all the information that you need as accessible as possible.
I'd say there's more of a difference between a play and movie to TV than there is between TV and movies. But there's something involved in the repetition of things that require something different from me in order to sign onto a script.
When you audition for something, and you book it, you think, 'Okay, well, I got the job, and now I actually have to show up on set and do it.' So, you show up on set, and you don't know, 'Am I going to get swallowed up by these people?'
I would go into periods of depression in my life, and I would feel so alone. I felt that there was no one who understood how I felt, either on TV or in music, and writing really helped me change what I thought and how I felt about myself.
A lot of stuff I was reading in mythology was about how women used to be taught to be wild. The wild woman was an essence that existed in the world. We're still coming back from many years of us being chiseled out to be identical and quiet.
As an actor, I think you can get really bad habits, if you do the same thing, every day. You can get stuck in a rut. So, I like jumping between genres, and then taking a break and learning something new. I like feeling like I'm still learning.
Maybe you're not perfect, but you're willing to actually look at yourself and take some kind of accountability. That's a change. It might not mean that you can turn everything around, but I think there's something incredibly hopeful about that.
Toni Collette has been a huge influence. She was my absolute number one idol, and then I got 'United States of Tara.' I was pinching myself. I couldn't believe the first day I was on set, and I got pages of dialogue of real stuff to do with her.
I find that the projects I enjoy signing up to at the moment are with a director who's interested in the script - isn't completely sure what the movie is and isn't concerned about it. He's just interested in going on the journey and discovering it.
I'm not really out in the world all that much. I mean, I live with no phone signal, in the hills surrounded by trees, and I have, like, a mom and two baby deer that come by all the time, and my dogs and the squirrels are in a full-on feud every morning.
I feel like it's too easy to just say, "We'll just change the name of this male character to a female, but have her do all the same things that a male does." I don't believe in that. I think there's something else. I think there's more to women than that.
I've always felt like I've had the ability to choose which roles I was going to play. I don't think that the industry agreed with me, but I've always had a bit of a headstrong attitude of only doing the things that I really believe in and want to explore.
I'm just interested in all of the different ways that a woman can be. We don't have enough, when it comes to American film, that shows all of the different complexities and ways that a woman is interesting and mysterious and dynamic and really complicated.
I wasn't perfect and didn't have it together. I felt alone. So through acting, I decided to be a shape shifter and with every role become the character instead of being myself. It meant about 10 years of no one knowing I was the same person in every movie.
I made three or four different fonts during 'Short Term 12' -' it was how I'd calm my mind between scenes. I have graph paper and gel pens, and I would do the alphabet: just do 'a' over and over again until I got it perfect and then go to 'b' and then 'c'.
Each step of the way I'm learning. When I leave an interview, I learn whether I feel, 'Oh, that was nice,' or that made me feel like a little piece of me was taken. It's a line that is always on the edge of being crossed, and once you cross it, what's next?
It's hard when I get to the end of the movie and am held hostage and am supposed to be very upset and the funniest things I've ever heard in my life are coming out. All I can do is pretend there's something really important behind me to hide my face from it.
I went through a phase of eating dinner in the shower because I thought, 'Why don't we do that?' Then I realised, 'Because it doesn't make any sense.' It doesn't save any time, and you can't really get into a steak and baked potato when there's water pouring on you.
I started acting in second grade - my first role was in the Thanksgiving play. I was the Indian chasing the turkey. All the other mom's encouraged my mom to get me into acting after that. Also, when I saw 'The Sound of Music' at Music Circus, I knew I wanted to act.
There's nothing I'd say that keeps me awake at night, but I think that when you're working with a group of people that are so beyond talented that, every day, you wake up going, "All right, I gotta fight to stay at the same level as these people," that's what makes it fun.
What 'Short Term 12' did was it gave me the confidence to explore my intuition more. The healing process that came for me for making that movie and then sharing it with people - I was able to see, first hand, that movies can have a healing power and they can teach us things.
I wasn't interested in going to the school dances. I wasn't interested in going to the football games. What I wanted was to be in my room painting my walls and doing weird stuff. That's what I wanted and I got to do what I wanted, so that, to me, is my high school experience.
There's nothing I'd say that keeps me awake at night, but I think that - when you're working with a group of people that are so beyond talented - that, every day, you wake up going, 'All right, I gotta fight to stay at the same level as these people.' That's what makes it fun.
The cool thing about designers is they have very specific points of view, and because my inspiration is always changing, it's easy to go, 'This feels right.' But just because I wear fancy dresses on weekends doesn't mean in my heart of hearts I'm not a jeans and T-shirt person.
I just always loved mythology, ever since I was a kid. Greek mythology was something I remember learning about in fourth grade, and Egypt, too, and something about both those things just clicked with me. I just thought they both were so beautiful and interesting to learn about.
I think it's always the moments that are the trials that end up making you become a hero in the end. You're not a hero unless you've gone through the trials. And it makes these moments so much sweeter, so much better. I don't believe in 'deserved,' but I might believe in 'earned.'
I think it is the fact that I want to quit that keeps me going. It's very complicated. But I think part of this whole exploration with every job that I do is, in terms of overcoming fear and by overcoming the fear, I feel so much more complete, and I learn something new about myself.
Part of accepting a role is being interested in the character and part of it is being interested in the movie or what it means and the exploration of it. But it's more about not knowing the answers to certain questions but wanting to go on the journey of discovery to find the answers.
Trends are not real; they are for the consumer, and once we can get enough of us to free ourselves from it and realize that it's not about strong-arming our way through, it's about understanding that we are so needed for the balance of this planet, then I think we can start having changes.
It can get really messy inside my head, and it's usually just because everybody can get really self-centered at some point. And so what usually keeps me from quitting is that my reasons for quitting are just lame. I wouldn't want anybody else to talk to myself the way that I talk to myself.
I was home-schooled, was always very close with my mom, and was very straight-laced and square. I was never the rebellious one, and I never threw hissy fits. I was the type of person that would show a Powerpoint presentation about why I should do something versus crying and screaming over it.
I feel very much aware of my mortality. I'm here, and then I'm not. It's the same thing with everything else: the movie comes out, and then it's gone. Everything is changing all the time, and I'm not going to stress out and spend my entire time chasing something that ultimately doesn't exist.
There are so many opportunities to learn things online, like between Coursera and Khan Academy and Duolingo. There are these awesome websites that are kind of these little personal Aristotles. There are times when I'm preparing for a role of some kind, and then I'll focus on a certain subject.
The constant is always mythologies and the very first stories that we have. All of the movies that last, that you return to, the movies that struck you as a kid and continue to open up to you 10 years later and 10 years after that - those are the movies I want to make. Those things are eternal.
Because we put ourselves in a movie or on TV, then it must mean we want to be completely open to the world. Sometimes, people will run up to you as if this is Disneyland and I'm a character. I understand their point of view, but it's difficult to explain how terrified it makes me. I'm so nervous.
One of the reasons I love making movies is because it's an opportunity to share with the world a different way of being or a different way of living or seeing the world. If it's something you've already seen before, if I have too many reference points for it, then it's not exciting for me to make.
In the past I've been very into the falling part, very into the swimming in the dark, deep emotional water. 'Rampart' I really went into it and it took me three times as long to get out of that depression as it did to just do the scenes. I had to learn to give it my all and then go home and laugh.
I started watching so many different types of women, saw all the complexities of them, all the ways and the look and shapes they could be, and I felt it was missing for me in American film. I didn't see anybody I was watching in movies that felt like me. I felt rather tortured and lonely about it.
There were times my mom and I butted heads - over my curfew, over something like that. Whenever we would hit these moments of emotional backfire, she would say, 'You just don't understand what it's like to be a mother... I could never handle losing you.' I was like, 'OK, but just, like, chill out.'
I know it's odd. But when I was getting scuba certified, it was explained very early on that you never get to just strap on a tank and jump into the ocean. You have to know how deep you're going, and the deeper you go, the less amount of time you stay down there - and it takes longer to get to the surface.
We have to choose every day to be active participants. To wake up in the morning and choose this life and make something of it is an incredible thing. Not many living creatures have that option. We have so many opportunities and options - it's a huge burden, but it's also the most freeing part of our lives.
The hardest pill for me to swallow has been receiving recognition, getting dressed up, going to events. That's the part that has always terrified me. You can see dozens of photos where I have zero hair and makeup and I'm wearing my own jeans and T-shirt, because I was not that interested in that side of it.