I became interested in educating people in the variety of ways in which women can express their emotion. Which is much easier to do in a large role than in a supporting role to a male protagonist. In general, the women in a supporting role to a male protagonist - cry a lot.

Frances McDormand

Women Men Which

That's another great thing about getting older. Your life is written on your face.

Life Great Your

My name is Frances Louise McDormand, formerly known as Cynthia Ann Smith. I was born in Gibson City, Ill., in 1957. I identify as gender-normative, heterosexual, and white-trash American. My parents were not white trash. My birth mother was white trash.

Frances McDormand

White Were Trash

I think that ageism is a cultural illness; it's not a personal illness.

Frances McDormand

Age Think Thin

My position has always been that the way people age and the signs that we show of aging is nature's way of tattooing. It's natural scarification, and the life you lead gives you the symbols and the emblems of your life, the road map you followed.

Frances McDormand

Nature Life Car

When you lose a spouse, you're a widow or widower; when you lose your parents, you're an orphan. When you lose a child, there's no word in the English language for that position, that place that you're left.

Frances McDormand

Age Your You

I'm trained in the theater, and acting, for me, is about the imaginative life I create for myself, not about basing it on something real. I think that whatever I create becomes the reality for the audience.

Frances McDormand

Life Whatever Trained

I'm not a depressive, but I certainly have mood swings. It's an occupational hazard, I would say, and I'm glad I'm in the occupation I'm in.

Frances McDormand

Would Wings Wing

Everybody dresses like a teenager. Everybody dyes their hair. Everybody is concerned about a smooth face.

Frances McDormand

Teen Age Yes

With aging, you earn the right to be loyal to yourself.

Frances McDormand

Yourself Yours Your

I am not a director or a writer, but a filmmaker.

Frances McDormand

Writer Write T

Growing up a preacher's kid wasn't the easiest thing. Everybody's always watching you to see how you'll behave - or misbehave.

Frances McDormand

You Wing Win

I went to high school in a steel town in Pennsylvania.

Frances McDormand

Van Town T

The fact that I'm sleeping with the director may have something to do with it.

Frances McDormand

Wit Thing Thin

I read books. Remember those? I read them, on paper.

Frances McDormand

Those Them T

The crew on 'Three Bilboards,' by the way, is one of the best I've ever worked with. And that's not hyperbole.

Frances McDormand

Work Worked Wit

We wrote 'Olive Kitteridge' as six hours, and they asked us to make it in four.

Frances McDormand

Wrote Us T

I'm from working-class, blue-collar America, and I don't believe that people in that socioeconomic strata wait until they're 40 to have children.

Frances McDormand

Work Working-Class Working

The last scene in 'Moonlight,' that's one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen on film in my lifetime. You see two men showing such tenderness towards each other. And it's bold; it's deep. It's complex. It's profound.

Frances McDormand

War Time Men

I was often told that I wasn't a thing. 'She's not pretty enough. She's not tall enough. She's not thin enough. She's not fat enough.' I thought, 'O.K., someday you're going to be looking for someone not, not, not, not, and there I'll be.'

Frances McDormand

You Thought Though

Adulthood is not a goal. It's not seen as a gift.

Frances McDormand

T Seen See

I became interested in educating people in the variety of ways in which women can express their emotion. Which is much easier to do in a large role than in a supporting role to a male protagonist. In general, the women in a supporting role to a male protagonist - cry a lot.

Frances McDormand

There's something healing about tears.

Frances McDormand

Because of my own insecurities about the way I look, I do sometimes sabotage the looks of my characters by making them as homely as possible. I've never done a glamour part. I'd like to some day, though I don't know if I could pull it off.

Frances McDormand

I was too old, too young, too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, too blond, too dark - but at some point, they're going to need the other. So I'd get really good at being the other.

Frances McDormand

If you want to talk about cultural appropriation, we have to go back to the Greeks.

Frances McDormand

I think that there's a clinical mental illness called depression, but I believe that post-industrial America has been narcotized by progress. There's a cultural malaise - mental illness or no - that everybody suffers from at some point in their life.

Frances McDormand

The only power you have is the word no.

Frances McDormand

I am an ordinary person.

Frances McDormand

A 90-minute time frame is not long enough to tell a good female story, and that's why long-format television has become so great for female storytelling and for female performers and directors and writers.

Frances McDormand

I never trusted good-looking boys.

Frances McDormand

I've always known that I'll have a career for the rest of my life because they'll always make movies about men, and men need women in their lives. But, when it comes to telling a woman's story, they're complex, circular, and not genre-driven.

Frances McDormand

I have friends who are movie stars, and I think it's just as hard a job as being a working actor. But it's a different job, and it's not the one I want.

Frances McDormand

We are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species. There's no desire to be an adult.

Frances McDormand

My politics are private, but many of my feminist politics cross over into my professional life.

Frances McDormand

I wasn't into sports, but I was really into Shakespeare.

Frances McDormand

I've got a rubber face. It has always served me very well and really helps, especially as I get older, because I still have all my road map intact, and I can use it at will.

Frances McDormand

No actor has complete freedom.

Frances McDormand

I think awards are good for the movie. They can bring a new audience to the movie. I've always claimed that things like that don't get you work. Work gets you work. That's my blue-collar, protestant work ethic.

Frances McDormand

I'm a character actress, plain and simple... Who can worry about a career? Have a life. Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.

Frances McDormand

Getting older and adjusting to all the things that biologically happen to you is not easy to do and is a constant struggle and adjustment.

Frances McDormand

I'm not an actor because I want my picture taken. I'm an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange.

Frances McDormand

Female characters in literature are full. They're messy: they've got runny noses and burp and belch. Unfortunately, in film, female characters don't often have that kind of richness.

Frances McDormand

Most women's pictures are as boring and as formulaic as men's pictures. In place of a car chase or a battle scene, what you get is an extreme closeup of a woman breaking down.

Frances McDormand

I don't think you can ever completely transform yourself on film, but if you do your job well, you can make people believe that you're the character you're trying to be.

Frances McDormand

I like hard rock, and classic rock, and even metal.

Frances McDormand

I don't think of myself as a movie star and I can pretty easily convince other people that I'm not a movie star.

Frances McDormand

I haven't wanted to play a mother for a long time because I am one.

Frances McDormand

It's much easier to play supporting roles because that's what I do in my life: I support my son.

Frances McDormand

Certainly, a lot of the films I've worked on have ended up good movies, but they haven't always been the best experiences.

Frances McDormand

Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.

Frances McDormand