Actress Quotes

You know, I don't really understand a suburban environment. I want to be out in the woods, I want to be where it's wild, I want to wake up and hear birds, I want to walk outside and see a gaggle of turkeys bouncing across my lawn - I want to be someplace like that - or I want to be right in the midd

Idleness does drive me crazy, but I'd rather read or write than do anything just to work. A kind of respect has been instilled in me for acting: I love it too much to ever have a bad relationship with it.

I've always done things the hard way. I was born like a piece of tangled yarn. The job is trying to untangle it, and I'll probably go on doing it for the rest of my life.

Eventually you love people - friends or lovers - because of their flaws.

Once I got to high school and auditioned for a play and got in, I thought this was really what I was looking for. Once that had got cleared up, from 13 on, that was it.

It's such a great feeling to make people laugh. I know I've made people cry or want to slit their wrists, but to make people laugh is a very intoxicating, wonderful thing.

I'm hard to pin down. I tend to look different in films.

I was always much more shy. All I knew was that I loved to act. But I don't know about the other part of it. I'm not sure I had the chutzpah to go and prove yourself.

I think the people who cast films tend to think of me in regard to strong women with integrity and a lot of it has been very good.

I think that I do separate myself a fair amount. And I don't feel like I am representing women. That's up to however people interpret it once they sort of see it.

I think of myself more as a character actor than that ingenue leading lady, who started out something like Michelle Pfeiffer, or Jessica Lange. I'm a bit quirkier than that.

I think I knew acting was what I wanted to do. But I was from this small town and there was no place for an adult to recognise it.

I never liked the bar scene. I tried to like it. I would give it a try every three or four months. I'd think, tonight I'm going out. But I never met anybody in that circumstance.

I just try and do the best with every role I get to do. Hopefully the experience in itself is a good experience and people will want to work with me.

I get recognised sometimes. But I just live my life. I get on the bus, I get on the subway, it's not a problem.

I don't have a political bone in my body.

I certainly do get at the end of my rope at times. We all do.

Almost any film that you do is an opportunity to open you up and make you more aware of an area that you might not be thinking about. That's what is kind of cool, or one of the cool things about this profession.

Acting gave me the opportunity to do outrageous things. It allowed me to be sad, happy, angry and lustful, even if it was just vicariously.

I was a very good girl for a long time, that's what really drew me to acting. The stage was the perfect place to be outrageous, to be sad, to be angry, to be all these different things.

You have to examine a scene on the page first. Then you get into the basics of acting: Who are you? Who are you talking to? How do you feel about that person?

Time management is a big part of the director's job.

There are some scenes that work beautifully in a moving, sweeping master, which is how I like to work.

The riot isn't seen in the movie, but it is alluded to. He has this one speech that gives a great sense of texture and paints a picture of what was happening in Harlem then.

The radio for these women is like television is for us today, which is really like looking at the radio.

The production team's first meeting took place at my house. I had ideas and a color scheme in mind, how I wanted the movie to look, because that has to be a real collaboration.

The clothes back in those days were made so much better than clothes are today. They actually took time to make clothes to fit a woman's body. Today they make clothes that fit sizes, so it stretches to fit this and that.

The biggest challenge was that we had to shoot so quickly and with such a limited budget.

That's the only way I can control my movie. If you shoot everything, then everything is liable to end up in the movie. If you have a vision, you don't have to cover every scene.

Michael Ralph brilliantly plays the street prophet, a West Indian who foreshadows the Harlem riot.