Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think the most important thing for me is a challenge. I'm not happy, creatively, unless I'm faced with a challenge. So, overcoming those challenges and really discovering characters that aren't like me helps me grow, as a person and as an artist.
My mom is actually a former prima ballerina, and all the women in my family are associated either with dance or choreography or acting, so I'm very lucky in a way because I grew up in a family of artists. I've been dancing since I was a little kid.
High school for me was not all that fun. I think it's a lot more fun after when you realize that high school ends, and everything that's important at that time is sort of not important if people don't like your jeans or whatever. It doesn't matter.
It's sort of scary to work with your parents when you're in the same business. But there was something so very safe about that. Acting with her was just like working with a wonderful actress who just happens to be my best friend and also my mother.
I've been the victim a lot, so I've often played the person who's getting raped or murdered or abused. And so, to actually be raping and murdering and abusing people is a whole different kind of challenge, and one that was very difficult, at times.
I want to try and wear as many Australian designers as I can because I'd like to support my Australian colleagues in the industry as well as find things that are eco-friendly. I love the green concept of wearing more sustainable garments at events.
Mostly, in The Great Waldo Pepper I remember the lovely Ed Herrmann befriending me and taking care of me. I was crying a lot. I was a real mess when we made that. But this is all such ancient history, Jesus Lord. Was this before or after The Sting?
What happens is that the system builds many inferior blood vessels in the eye to take the place of the vessels that are dying. And those blood vessels are not up to the task. And they bleed. They hemorrhage and they cover the eye inside with blood.
There's a difference between dreaming and doing. The dreamers just sit around and moon about how wonderful it would be if only things were different. The years roll on and by and by they grow old and they forget everything, even about their dreams.
First of all, plain and simple, you have no real idea of what it means to be famous until you become famous. It's a double-edged sword. Obviously there are a lot of amazing things about fame, but there are also a lot of challenging things about it.
On student films, everyone is pitching in to do everything, and I never felt like I was a part of a group before I started acting. I always felt like I had friends in this group and I had friends in that group, but I never felt like I had my group.
I don't know what's waiting for me around the corner and I don't know what else I'm going to be doing in the future - but you've got to enjoy things while you're doing them. There are tough times and mountains to climb, but you've got to go for it.
If I gave my mother a knitted scarf she'd be worried I was wasting my time doing stupid stuff like knitting instead of school work. Presenting a homemade knitted object to my parents was actually like handing them a detailed backlog of my idleness.
I think references, where they fit organically, are great. It's great to do a show that's real and relatable, and so much of what is real, is using real things and instances that are specific. Specificity is the best tool you can have, as a writer.
The business of Hollywood, if you don't have other things going on, it will eat you up and spit you out... If you take what those people and that social structure think of you - if you let it govern your life - you might as well just kill yourself.
I thought Hillary Clinton was remarkably elegant and intelligent and focusing on the issues even though her opponent was trying to bring the talk always to vulgar, low levels. Even his presence was bullying, was lurking, and was just mainly creepy.
The accumulation of experience gives you a debt in terms of compassion. I am very fortunate, and I feel dedicated to giving back to other women. Wherever I am now, I make sure I visit a women's shelter. But I don't want to do it in a frivolous way.
But now Americans, they felt a sense of peace and protection because they've been separated by so many thousands of miles of ocean. And you know, the fact that it's come to the U.S. like this is so sad, and yet you know, what can you do? It's here.
Only children are weird. The only children I know, including myself, are either superweird or very talented and special or a mix of the two. I think there was always a certain independence and loneliness - I had a lot of imaginary friends as a kid.
If you have the opportunity to play these characters that are three-dimensional and very deeply rooted in an emotional level, they stay with you. They lived in you anyway, the density of them. It takes a while to realize how they've influenced you.
I wanted to make a film - and I've been wanting to do this for 16 years - about life in care, and bring it to the public's attention, because I had never seen anything, on TV or in the cinema, which said: 'This is how it feels to be a kid in care'.
I don't force myself to exercise; I find going to gyms really boring. I find it easier to go for a fast walk or a jog in Central Park. I wear sensible shoes because my ballet dancing left me with a bunion on one foot after all the pointe exercises.
TV has changed so much, from the fact that there are so many channels available now to spoilers. There were no blogs when I was on Buffy. There were no weekly magazines, aside from People. Now, to be able keep your secrets for your show is so hard.
At 27 or so I thought, you know, I actually do really want to make money and have a proper life, and I don't want to be a loser. I know! I'll go to university and get a proper degree and maybe get a job in media... I went and did an English degree.
Dior makes the best lip glosses going. I'm nuts about them, especially the clear one with the silver sparkles. I got addicted to DiorShow Mascara, too. It makes you look like you're wearing false eyelashes. It's the only one that rivals Maybelline.
In L.A., everyone is in their car all the time, so you're used to not interacting with people for the majority of the day, and it kind of trickles into nightlife and all that. People stay within their circles and there's no real mingling to be had.
There is something at work that's bigger than us. It's about having a trust in life and being at peace that things are happening the way they should. You do what you do as well as you can do it, and then you don't worry or agonize about the outcome
I was just on Broadway for four months, and the amount of fan mail that arrived at the theater was just overwhelming. I mean, I had no idea! I guess people suddenly had access to me and knew where to find me, so they got me there, and I was amazed.
These days kids get paid enough that they probably don't need to work too much. The problem is when the person is old enough that they need to work to make a living, and the only thing that they know how to do is what they are already washed up in.
What people are going to be surprised about is that Tia and I are really different. We're nothing like the characters on 'Sister, Sister.' We're kind of swapped. I was the crazy, mischievous one on the show - Tia was the studious, more serious one.
My generation is one of the first generations of "choiceful" women - women who have actually had the choice of how they architect their lives - and I don't think shame should have any place in that. But as that generation, you get cuts and bruises.
I've still got to do something to help, however tiny it is. I always think of the old Hebrew saying, which is translated roughly into, 'He who saves one life saves the world,' because it's pretty ghastly to think of all the people we're not saving.
What you wear - and it always starts with your shoes - determines what kind of character you are. A woman who wears high heels carries herself very different to a girl who wears sneakers or sandals. It really helps determine how you carry yourself.
What I am learning from my experience as someone who grew up as a refugee, who became French, and then became American is that nationalities are something that we use to divide us. We are all one humanity. I want to dedicate my voice to all people.
I know quickly whether a guy is boyfriend material. If I can have a good time doing absolutely nothing with him, then that's boyfriend material for me. Like if we're able to have fun at a gas station. I've had some really good times at gas stations.
I definitely had to be talked into 'American Pie: Reunion.' I was hesitant because I'm on a show, and I felt, 'I'm happy. I've got my family.' But then I met the directors, who also wrote it, and once I read the script, I was like, 'OK, sign me up.'
Paparazzi will sit outside my house to see where I'm going, and when they see it's the studio, they'll be like, "This is boring," and drive off. But you'd never catch me dancing on tables in public. I have no desire to be known for my personal life.
What's so kind of beautiful about the whole thing was that everything that made me not right for all of those hundreds of commercial auditions that I went on and no one ever wanted me for is what made me perfectly right for 'Real Women Have Curves'.
Sometimes in my class I have people come in and do monologues inspired by people they know and I always find that to be useful to do specifics about somebody and then you're actually doing a character and not doing some random old lady or something.
I was brought up with two sisters, so I do know about a three-way dynamic. It's a complex one, because it's easy for one to get left out and the others to gang up. In my family, we were all pretty up for it, but the dynamics would constantly change.
Years ago, I was thinking about this type of character and what happens when you've lived in this sort of strange, surreal world where it's parties all the time and then you don't get to live there anymore. What do you do with the rest of your life?
Okay, I am happy with the way I look, but I have never, never, ever thought of myself as a 'pretty girl.' Honestly. When I read some of these scripts I'm sent, and they describe the heroine as 'incredibly beautiful,' I wonder why they sent it to me.
People are at their happiest if they are true to themselves. I think that applies to their chosen profession, friends and relationships. It goes for your health too. If you are true to yourself, it seems to me everything should work out pretty well.
I've always just adored music. It's my first love, really. I admire and respect people in the music business. You really have to work hard and diligently. Sometimes actors can be lazy and get away with it, but you can't do that if you're a musician.
My grandmother and I followed my mother here, to a house a block north of Hollywood Boulevard but a million miles away from Hollywood, if you know what I mean. We would hang out behind the ropes and look at the movie stars arriving at the premieres.
I think actors who know their job know that's how you do it. You don't show up and make people miserable. That poor grip who's standing there, he just wants to feed his family. He doesn't need to hear about your psychosis on life and love and death.
Any woman who is currently with a man is with him partly because she loves the way he smells. And if we haven't smelled you for a day or two and then we suddenly are within inches of you, we swoon. We get light-headed. It's intoxicating. It's heady.
I have women coming up to me and saying: 'I love your character! She's so empowered. She takes control; she gets what she wants.' That's another side of her. And I respect that in Joan. She says and does things that I would never allow myself to do.
I think I'm better at playing difficult than I am at being normal. And to me that's something I'm working on now. I'm not really that difficult or complex a person, so it's interesting to me that it's just so much harder for me to play an everygirl.
One of the things I have always said about the man-woman relationship is that I don't want anybody to walk ahead of me, and I don't want anybody to walk behind me. I want a man who will walk along beside me. And that's how I feel about equal rights.