To play someone when the character masks their own emotions, doesn't understand their own emotions, has no release for their own emotions, and yet is full of emotion - that is a much harder character to play than someone who has somewhere to put it.

Melissa Leo

Ever since Marilyn Monroe was transformed from one of the prettiest girls you could ever hope to see into an icon, everyone has been trying to repeat that icon. And now the entire industry is filled with, and by and large run by, wannabes.

Melissa Leo

An actor has to be very, very careful, as one of the most wonderful props - and actors love props - is a cigarette. There's so much to do with it: you can bring it up to your face, play with the smoke. It's just the greatest - ever since I was 16 and in acting school in England, I've been playing around with cigarettes.

Melissa Leo

Hire me for the next picture. I don't have to just play down-and-out trailer trash and mean, old, wicked, old nuns. I could play a princess or a queen. That's all I wanted to do. Because campaigning does go on. It's a part of selling the film.

Melissa Leo

Through all of this lovely interviewing, and nice things people say, and the rest of it, I have learned that I am an actor. That is my profession. That is my job. That is how I make a living. So I am just out there making a living.

Melissa Leo

I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke.

Melissa Leo

There were not enough women like Kay on TV and now there are none.

Melissa Leo

I got none. I mean, I have no religion. I like the quote unquote 'Virgin Mary,' but no Catholicism.

Melissa Leo

To be a comic, you must reveal yourself in your most grotesque nudity. And it's only then, when the truth gets told, when the audience recognizes it somewhere in themselves, that they get that great medicine of laughter.

Melissa Leo

I do get a fair amount of scripts; I got 'Frozen River' kinda just that way. I have a hard time turning my back on anybody who says they have something for me.

Melissa Leo

More often, I'm asked to play somebody's mother, somebody's partner, somebody's wife.

Melissa Leo

Being an actor on a movie set is like going to the playground at recess.

Melissa Leo

I know that one of my difficulties as an actor is to try to do too much, from all those years ago when my acting took place live on a stage. It was just my shiny face there, so you've gotta be super careful how much over-expressing you're doing with your eyes and nose and so on.

Melissa Leo

I'm interested in what the fans think, in what would make them feel connected to the Wayward Pines they had grown to love. I had a lot of fun thinking about the first season.

Melissa Leo

Acting is the business of truth, so that we can see ourselves reflected back and learn.

Melissa Leo

I haven't had a lot of experience with glamour. I've never had to mask myself, as many now not-so-young actresses have had to do. Female actors in that regard have a different lot in life than male actors.

Melissa Leo

I think this notion of acting and glamour is getting in everybody's way.

Melissa Leo

An actor's life is fairly lonely.

Melissa Leo

You know, when I got started on television in the '80s, you would go to the costume department, and if you were a female they put you into a skirt. And you had a pocketbook, usually a shoulder bag.

Melissa Leo

I'm not a particularly ambitious actress. I love to go and do my work, head down in the dirt, and be the character.

Melissa Leo

'Wayward Pines' has largely been, in my experience, a show left to the actors.

Melissa Leo