Nature is my church. The wind in the trees and the bugs and the frogs. All those things are comfort to me.
Sissy Spacek
You know, I don't know what the future will bring, but I'm ready for whatever comes!
I don't have any regrets, because I think life is like a creek. It kind of meanders along, and you instinctively do the things you are meant to do. There's no great plan except doing really good scripts, meeting great filmmakers. And I have to have something that I can bring to the role.
Our perception of celebrities in Hollywood is not the reality. The reality of our lives is so much like everyone else's life. We have family members we love, everyone gets up in the morning, they have three meals a day and they go about their business.
For me, life is a bowl of cherries.
I am a woman of simple tastes.
Nothing in life prepared me for the way I felt about being a mother. Until then, I sort of felt like a blank sheet of paper. I was always trying to second-guess myself, to be what others wanted me to be.
I studied homeopathy for years and years. Herbs and all kinds of acupuncture, acupressure, alternative medicine. I think it's just better to treat the whole person.
I'm not Meryl Streep. My God - she's the greatest actor that ever lived. It's sad that ordinary actors like me are compared to her.
I don't like to do something just to prove I can do it.
I love a lot of the '70s musicians, like Bonnie Raitt. And I love Sheryl Crow. But probably my favorite musician is a woman by the name of Schuyler Fisk.
I wanted to be Joni Mitchell.
I swore to my parents that no one would ever be able to buy me.
Texas is just so rich with characters. Women who live alone in a little house on a thousand acres with nothing but cattle and a pickup truck. And an airplane.
Just about every town in Texas has a beauty pageant. Ours was called The Dogwood Fiesta. I was in one of those. I played the guitar and sang - and lost.
If somebody wants to think of me as a movie star, that's fine, that's great. It sort of makes me giggle.
I think that we all fantasize about that teeny tiny time in the film industry when women ruled, back in the '40s.
We like to believe we are in control of our destinies, even though we never are and we never have been.
I loved growing up in a little town. I loved knowing people. I loved going to the store and running into people. I loved going into the store and having forgotten my bag, saying, 'Charge it, put it on my bill.' I loved going to the gas station and saying, 'Pete, fill it up.' I loved that continuity of life.
That was the magical thing about the Seventies: artists ruled. Because films were relatively low-budget, nobody cared. We could just go off and work.
I actually never got in a play in school. My teacher said I never learned my lines.
I'm drawn to ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, which is a big part of the human condition.
There are stories you can tell on TV that can't be told in movies anymore.
I'm a flower gardener.
I love the women I've played.
I used to play softball every summer back in Quitman. My two brothers demanded I be tough. There were certain girls they wouldn't let me invite over because they were too feminine and fragile.
It's difficult to just let go of a character. Especially after you've been preparing and researching for weeks.
That's what I love about acting and love and drama and art: that humanness we all share.
My father's family is German and Czech.
I lived an idyllic 'Huckleberry Finn' life in a tiny town. Climbing trees. Tagging after brothers. Happy. Barefoot on my pony. It was 'To Kill a Mockingbird'-esque.
Fame sweeps you away. I had to go home every six months to remember who I am.
My parents were devoted. Civic minded. We had family counsels. Three of us children against two of them. We lived a 'Leave It to Beaver' time.
There's kind of a time you get warned about where the rug gets pulled out from under you: beyond ingenue, before you get into character stuff.
I think the thread running through most midwives is the passion.
I'm a fool for a good role in a creative piece where there are really such talented writers and wonderful actors.
I think people in the north and the south and the east and the west, anywhere they come from, are just as interesting, and they're humans. They have the same realm of emotions that we all have. But I'm just more drawn to the Southern character and the different types, and Southern literature is so lyrical and so wonderful.
Rarely in film acting do you get to do a scene for very long.
My biggest thrill in life is to read in the afternoon until I fall asleep and take a nap.
I think my mother's family came on the Mayflower from England - D.A.R., you know.
Some families can experience terrible tragedy and deal with it, and others not. I find those things fascinating.
It's a whole other way of working when you work in films: You know exactly the arc of your character.
For a while, I just sang at a steakhouse. I would go from table to table and really just survived on tips.
With my coloring, I'm nothing in black and white. I've seen my films sometimes on black-and-white TV. Disaster.
For me, I never really wanted to be in a 'Sissy Spacek' vehicle. That was not my intention. I got to be the 'Everygirl.'
Jingle taps on the majorette boots were an important part of a little girl growing up in the South.
There is a long tradition of pungent living in the South. It was wonderful to have that imprinted on me so early in life. I already had my core when I left my little town in Texas.
Everybody who loves me calls me Sissy, so I guess that's just who I am. When I'm 80, they'll still be calling me Sissy. Oh, well, I guess there are worse things.
I'm a fool for a brilliant filmmaker. And for someone who wants to try new things.
I hated country music growing up, but it gets in your bone marrow, kind of like a disease.
When I started out in independent films in the early '70s, we did everything for the love of art. It wasn't about money and stardom. That was what we were reacting against. You'd die before you'd be bought.
