If you asked somebody, 'what do you wish for in life?' they wouldn't say 'happiness.' I would have answered 'excitement, knowledge,' God knows - I mean, many, many different things, but certainly not 'happiness'. It seemed like a foreign concept to wish for something that specific and that singular.
Connie Nielsen
The act of writing can be a form of release - a confession performs the same action: putting your inner life on the page or into the hands of a trusted person releases tensions and sheds light on what often seems hidden until spoken - or written.
If Copenhagen were a person, that person would be generous, beautiful, elderly, but with a flair. A human being that has certain propensities for quarrelling, filled with imagination and with appetite for the new and with respect for the old - somebody who takes good care of things and of people.
We have a certain warped sense of humor in Scandinavia, and that is what comes across in the choices in a lot of our movies.
For breakfast, I eat organic food with high fat content, such as whole milk yogurt, nuts, seeds, fresh fruit and a scrambled egg. I cook it in organic grape seed oil for its high omega content. I drink a cappuccino for its dose of milk and the coffee for its taste, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
I've played lots of strong women in film, in big Hollywood films, and I've sometimes had a hard time in coming to a consensus of what makes a woman strong.
You think once you've shown what you can do, and your movies have been successful, that snap, you work. So to discover the difference between guys' roles and girls' roles made me plain mad. It's unjust.
I'm a pretty emotional gal.
I'm definitely more attracted to chaos than to order. The point is, I find the female roles out there very cliche. If we are limited to being only lovers or mothers, we are limiting ourselves.
I believe eating is a form of medicine, a reasoned way of giving your body and mind what it needs.
I say no to a lot of things that just don't fit my life. I involve my kids in what I'm struggling with so they don't compete with it.
I trained with the FBI in Portland and I also had many conversations with female FBI agents in Los Angeles, as well. That was again something that also came in very handy for Basic, because I'd learned already how to handle a gun and how to behave just physically when you're in a situation, a threat. That was very good to know.
As long as we suspect female actors of being somehow complicit in their own victimization, as willing participants in their own humiliation, we shame the victim and enable the culture of silence that allows predators to act with impunity.
I absolutely refuse the fame part of my business. I refuse even the money side of my business. I try to do as good work as I can do, I try to grow in my art and reach for truth. That's what I want from my art, that's what I aspire to.
I try to combine my work with my family, that's what I aspire to. I don't say that's the only thing. It's not all work and family, because otherwise you would be saying no to the many other things in life and there are many other things.
I don't think I can remember a moment in my life where people didn't discuss politics. People discuss politics at the table.
Often when you get a really good script, and you receive the new pages, you see that the entire thing has been dumbed down. Films in the '30s and '40s, that were huge blockbusters, were very sophisticated in their language, and the ideas they brought. There were no questions about whether the audience would get it or not.
I love cities that are on the water. I love the water element, specifically the sea. I grew up on the sea and I grew up sailing - I love sailing - and the presence of the sea gives the air and the light a very special quality that I absolutely adore.
As an artist you actually do have to make a choice to be an outsider. If you're an outsider you have the freedom to say what people on the inside don't dare to say.
I will always find something that I want to try and become better at. I always love to spend more time with my friends, more time with my family, my extended family. I always want to read more books.
TV is a different animal these days. You can bring together really smart writing and directing, in-depth character development and really meaty political and emotional stories.
I always look for stories that really try to tell the world that I see, a world that values and is full, in fact, of stories that are important.
I love doing stunts. I'm dedicated to stunts, in fact. I really find that that brings me even closer to a physical truth about my character that I enjoy being a part of. I love doing that stuff.
Human Needs Project is really about how to come up with a different approach to helping, really focusing on the dignity of people living in communities you are not a part of, and how to approach these communities with help, but more look at it as an investment and a collaboration with these communities rather than, 'Here comes the white savior!'
Doing social media is a way of not giving in to this inclination to hiding. But instead, I'm teaching myself to feel comfortable about being open.
I worked on the Harvey Weinstein-produced 'The Great Raid,' where I warned a young co-star not to take Harvey up on his invitations to drinks unless the whole group was there.
Our industry is made up of so many separate entities and participants, it seems we might benefit from creating a harassment ombudsman in each union, or one for the whole industry.
For dinner, I have at least four or five different vegetables of all colors: purple, orange, green and red. I eat as many colors as possible, including carrots, broccolini, asparagus, cauliflower, kale and more.
I drink red wine every night and chamomile tea before bed.
I started on the stage with my mom in Denmark doing political revues in a small, small town.
The size difference on a Warner Bros. film versus the small productions I had been on in Europe was enormous. You go from 20 people on set to 150.
I seriously suck at auditions.
It's disconcerting that there's been this weird business model focused on teenaged boys, and it comes with a completely unexamined social cost. I hope there's an awareness happening to create an audience habituated to seeing women as they really are, rather than just a masticated shadow.
I am a political animal.
It's the best thing, when you are in a creative space, discovering something and being enamored with it and excited by it.
You love your child, and you want to protect your child more than anything on this planet, and yet, by the time they're 17, 18, they're going to step into this world, and that world will not feel the same compunction, necessarily, toward your daughter.
I love going to museums.
I don't think people who are already burdened with social, economic, psychological situations, dysfunctional families, need to be burdened with other people with the same problems.
The price of confessing is to be confronted with the truth of who you are - you have to bear your faults, your frailties.
True strength lies in openness and working in concert with people and events.
