If you're not growing, you're dying, and I'm not ready for that.
Mary Steenburgen
There's a style to doing period pieces, and you can't do a Western without understanding 'My Darling Clementine.'
I decided if you're lucky enough to be alive, you should use each birthday to celebrate what your life is about.
'Step Brothers' was like a reward for going through my whole career and somehow surviving.
I'm not saying it's easy, and it's definitely harder for women. Because there is definitely a double standard about gorgeous older men, and it's different for older women.
Reading is how I became an actor because I didn't grow up in a house where there was an awareness of film or theater. I also grew up in a house full of teachers, so reading was big in our world.
My son, he has a film group, a bunch of film nerds that sit around and screen movies, and when they had Mary Steenburgen Night, the two movies they screened were 'Melvin And Howard' and 'Clifford.'
I feel like I'm attracted to characters who have one foot firmly planted on the ground. And their heads up in the clouds somewhere. Practical dreamers. They try to impress you that they've got this whole thing figured out, but there's more going on inside their heads than you might imagine.
I got my SAG card on my first movie, 'Goin' South,' with Jack Nicholson in 1978.
Writing is essentially an internal process.
There's something inside of me that just connects or doesn't connect with the project.
There's no strategy involved in my career decisions. I do whatever roles make my heart beat faster.
I'm real strong, and I'm also real feminine, and I don't find a struggle having those two things under one roof.
I grew up believing in Santa Claus, and we still treat our house at Christmas with a huge reverence for that belief - even though our children are 19 through 23.
In my business, guys may age, but it's not even a question they're valued. But women my age are supposed to disappear.
I take the fact that films cost a lot of money very seriously, but once in a while to have somebody say, This is a big scene, take your time with it, is important. That's John Sayles.
I wrote my first song when I was 54 years old.
There's a certain arrogance to an actor who will look at a script and feel like, because the words are simple, maybe they can paraphrase it and make it better.
For me, acting has often been solitary. You're all together, and then boom, you're gone.
My mother was a gorgeous person with no vanity, but she was a really good soul.
I loved Westerns for different reasons as an adult. It is not only our only native brand of storytelling - the only one that's not influenced by Europeans and not something that's done better by the French - but I also love the sensuality of the Western. The sights, sounds, and smell of a Western are very exciting.
My family didn't have money to travel, so reading was how I knew about the world. It made me hungry to have more experiences than just what I could possibly experience in Arkansas.
My heritage, many generations back, is Dutch and it was fun to go where nobody asked me how to pronounce my name.
Christopher Lloyd was actually the first person - or certainly one of the first few - who ever spoke to me on film.
'Last Man On Earth,' I have to say, is a love for me. I mean, a true passion. To people who haven't watched it or who've watched a little and thought, 'Ah, I don't know where this is going,' or whatever, I urge them to check it out again.
I know this is kind of corny, but we thought about renewing our vows again because I think my mom would really love it if we did that in Arkansas, where I came from.
Whenever we start a new TV series, there's also a lot of question marks, and part of that is finding who you are.
The part in 'Philadelphia' where I represent the law firm that's firing Tom Hanks, that was a hard part for me because I lost one of my best friends to AIDS, and it was hard for me to play a part that wasn't sympathetic to someone with AIDS.
I studied with Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. I was in the last class to study with him before he had his larynx removed, so I actually remember the sound of his voice. He was an incredible teacher.
I know that's why I became an actress. In my dream world, I could get mad and scream and yell, and if somebody died, they got up again. In real life, I didn't dare try it.
I had a sense of mortality since I was a little girl, which has to do with my father, who nearly died eight times in my childhood. He had eight heart attacks.
I want women, especially young women, to create a world where your success is not based on being young.
Anything to do with the South resonates with me, because I'm Southern.
It's usually, my people speak to your people and then they speak around each other and trade calls for weeks.
I'd already made the decision before I'd even read it-just because it was John Sayles. Then when I read it, the themes were actually themes that have been a big part of my life.
I helped found Artists for New South Africa, but it used to be called Artists for Free South Africa. Alfre Woodard and a bunch of us started this.
There's just such a premium on hurrying, and the camera is the be all and end all, and the actors had better hurry up and get it right and get it done.
It was a few days later I came out to Hollywood for a screen test, and so did a lot of other people. So, I really didn't think I would get it. I was definitely the one that was least likely to get it, because everyone else was an already established star.
I was this person with this weird last name from New York that no one had ever heard of. But my screen test I guess, according to him, was the best. So I got the part, which was incredible.
I think that we need to look hard at our beliefs and be responsible about how we speak out.
I have never had any success in planning my life, really.
I don't know how I could plan my career.
I am lucky enough not to have to take jobs unless I love the material.
I have never been able to sing in the shower, much less in front of anybody.
I did sing in a choir for a while, but if anybody was sick, I always whispered my songs to make sure nobody could pick out my voice.
I think, as an actor, you're constantly confronted with your fear of sticking your neck out.
I was a waitress for six years in New York. I actually got fascinated to see how fast and how good a waitress I could be. I was doing it, so I tried to do it as well as I could.
I would say that the things that have really left a mark on me have more to do with my family and my children's lives rather than a film role.
Let me put it this way. There is more to acting than just acting like somebody. I like to act in such a way that other people get some notion of what it's like to be somebody.
I'm a chameleon when it comes to languages.
