An actor's life is fairly lonely.

The climate informs the character.

You have to let the costume inform you.

People often expect me to be something other than what I am.

I rarely know too much about anything I'm getting involved in.

There were not enough women like Kay on TV and now there are none.

My mom was a '70s mom. She paved a road that no one had yet walked.

The key to acting has much more to do with listening than with talking.

I think this notion of acting and glamour is getting in everybody's way.

Being an actor on a movie set is like going to the playground at recess.

I'm not particularly fond of the hybrid writer-director or actor-director.

That's what acting is. You're not alone. It's reacting. That's what we do.

I'm very old-school. I like a director to direct me. I like to be the actor.

'Wayward Pines' has largely been, in my experience, a show left to the actors.

More often, I'm asked to play somebody's mother, somebody's partner, somebody's wife.

I love acting. I really do. I think that's maybe the one thing that is known about me.

Acting is the business of truth, so that we can see ourselves reflected back and learn.

The power of television - it's so present in our lives, we don't even know how powerful it is.

If I'm going to get an ice cream cone two or three times a week, then it's a pleasure. No guilt.

I got none. I mean, I have no religion. I like the quote unquote 'Virgin Mary,' but no Catholicism.

Docudrama is not really my game, but it's interesting to play real people; it's interesting to play 'real.'

That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it.

Supporting actors are the support. You can't make a building without support. You can't buy dinner without support.

I'm not a particularly ambitious actress. I love to go and do my work, head down in the dirt, and be the character.

Why do we have to pretend we're not in the sales game? I didn't sign on to be a salesman. I signed on to be an actor.

I can nap with hustle and bustle around me; I can nap quietly all by myself. It's something I've always been good at.

Wayward Pines, I tell you, is a strange place, and the entry is always the hardest part. I was just going along for the ride.

I do wish everyone would call me Leo. It's not that I don't like Melissa. But the more I hear it called out, the worse it sounds.

To get the hippie out of certain characters is probably the most difficult thing for me. I was not a hippie by choice but by birth.

I know what it meant to me to play the Reverend Mother, a role I've, in some ways, prepared a lifetime to do. It's why I took the part.

I think I understand the line between my job and the director's. I have no interest in directing. Not my movie, not your movie, nobody's movie.

There is a wealth of knowledge to be understood from others' work, don't get me wrong, and when I do stumble upon others' work, it's not lost on me.

I have been known for almost 30 years to sort of do whatever comes my way. It's always been touch-and-go after each job finishes. I just like to be working.

Well, I don't think of myself as a feminist at all. As soon as we start labeling and categorizing ourselves and others, that's going to shut down the world.

I do get a fair amount of scripts; I got 'Frozen River' kinda just that way. I have a hard time turning my back on anybody who says they have something for me.

My body has done for me all these years things I couldn't ever even dreamt to do for characters. It's a tool, molecularly speaking, and I need to take care of it.

I was really not familiar at all with Edward Snowden. I like to get that right out of the way and really learned most of what I know from Oliver's [Stones] script.

As an actor, you live a little bit of a cloistered life. It's a lonely life. You oddly, strangely find yourself all alone, quite often, with a lot of time to think.

I'm a little bit of a glutton for punishment, especially when it comes to work. I don't mind a bit of suffering. I think it's in suffering that we realize our best selves.

It's not exactly an interview that's going on [in documentary]. I guess we do ask Edward Snowden some questions and we're recording him answering them and so on like that.

I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke.

As actors, emotion is the sand in the sandbox for us. Without emotion, there's nothing to play - and we are playing. We know that. Whether you think we do or not, we know that.

I have some close friends I keep in touch with. I knit. I watch a little too much TV. I ski, if the weather's right for that. If I can find a group of buddies, I go rock climbing.

It becomes more and more popular to call actors who play characters "character actors." But I've always been somebody who is much more invested in who I am playing than how they look.

I am that lucky woman who has been living my life all my life. Anything can happen now. Anything. And it will be only whip cream and delightful things. Even in the conflict and the hardship.

I mean, the unfair treatment of women and black people and Indians and other groups, that's real. Mistreatment of other people because 'I'm better than you are' is such a sad part of the world.

You know, when I got started on television in the '80s, you would go to the costume department, and if you were a female they put you into a skirt. And you had a pocketbook, usually a shoulder bag.

I live in the country, and I live a fairly natural, holistic life. Sometimes I get put up in hotels where they use chemical sprays to clean things, or there are chemicals used that I stay away from.

I always wanted to play a nun, and to play the Reverend Mother was a thrill of a lifetime for me. But, generations back, my family were not churchgoers, which is an unusual thing in the United States.

I think the funny thing about acting for me - and I hold it in a very holy, spiritual way - not to be overly fundamentalist about it, but it's that important to me - is that it is an ancient healing art.

Share This Page