Mary Steenburgen Quotes
Actress
A period piece is a great opportunity for an actress. I love acting because I love to pretend, and when you're doing a period piece, then even the time you're in is pretend, so there's that much more to play with.
I wish sometimes people wouldn't underestimate me. But it's a fleeting wish. It's not where I live.
Life is about surviving loss.
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 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.
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.
It's very easy to approach a character like that - a so-called strong woman who overcomes the odds - and give a one-note performance, playing that strength alone. Strength is only one thing a person has.
Essential oils are extremely important to me.
If you're not growing, you're dying, and I'm not ready for that.
I love dark chocolate, 70 percent and up.
Anything to do with the South resonates with me, because I'm Southern.
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've had a great time doing it - being able to say yes to a couple of amazing shows.
I don't know how I could plan my career.
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.
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.
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.
It's usually, my people speak to your people and then they speak around each other and trade calls for weeks.
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.
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.
I got my SAG card on my first movie, 'Goin' South,' with Jack Nicholson in 1978.
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 have never been able to sing in the shower, much less in front of anybody.
I have never had any success in planning my life, really.
There's something inside of me that just connects or doesn't connect with the project.
I am lucky enough not to have to take jobs unless I love the material.
I think that we need to look hard at our beliefs and be responsible about how we speak out.
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.
Christopher Lloyd was actually the first person - or certainly one of the first few - who ever spoke to me on film.
The sights and sounds and smells, the whole genre of Westerns - I love them.
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 started in improv and went into different kinds of things.
I write music as a staff writer for Universal Music Group, and I have since 2007. I've never talked about it publicly because I wanted to earn the right to be in the same room as the great writers I write with and not shoot my mouth off because I'm an actor. It's really important to me, and I really care about it.
I'm a very musical person.
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.
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've found that most people who studied when they were little, even if they never took another tap class, it's percussive, so it stays in your body, the muscle memory of it.
Wii on Nintendo is amazing.
I love to paint. And I have another profession - an interior design business.
'Step Brothers' is probably the film the most people who approach me want to talk about.
There's a certain freedom that comes when people don't expect you to be sexy.
I've had battles with writers who live in L.A. and were writing southern characters, because they felt like if they wrote 'Sugar' and 'Honey' at the end of every sentence, that would make it southern.
I panic at parties. I don't like talking absolutely nothing and pretending, so I'm quite odd socially.
We don't want to be reminded that life ends at some point, so they don't put older people on the screen.
Do I feel like I still need to prove myself? Absolutely. And I want to feel that way, and I like that.
I remember when I was growing up and watching southern people depicted on television, I thought, 'Well, based on what I'm seeing, I guess I'm supposed to be stupid and racist.' It's still, sadly, the easy route for a writer to go.
There are no worse cliches than southern cliches. They make my skin crawl.
My mother was a gorgeous person with no vanity, but she was a really good soul.
Hey, it's a miracle to have a career in Hollywood. But it doesn't begin to sum me up.
I was excited to turn 60.
As an actor, you're always looking for, what do I get to do? It's not just what do I say, but what do I do, too.
I decided if you're lucky enough to be alive, you should use each birthday to celebrate what your life is about.
Will Forte is such a nice, extraordinarily creative human being. Utterly fearless.
I don't want to go to just watch big huge summer movies that everybody predicts is going to be the big huge summer movie and that are all the sort of blow-them-up movies or whatever you want to call them. I think there are a lot of other people out there, too, that want an alternative.
I did 'Philadelphia' and 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape?' at the same time. It's kind of wonderful to do it that way, because you get very hyper-focused.
At one point, I kind of looked in the mirror and said, 'You know, you're a mom. You're a wife. People count on you; you can't go off the deep end into this kind of crazy musical swirl.'
'Justified' had such dead-on beautiful scripts that you didn't want to mess with it.
My agents and managers deserve a special Emmy award for scheduling.
Whenever we start a new TV series, there's also a lot of question marks, and part of that is finding who you are.
I have hundreds of songs.
There's just a total boatload of crazy that goes with singing live for the first time when you're 60 years old.
I learned not to care what other people think.
What a mother I am. I can't even make popcorn.
I don't consider myself much of a singer. I'm a writer first.
I wanted a relationship like the one my mother and father had. It wasn't perfect; they had to work on it. But there was an unbelievable mutual respect.
I learned so much about life and other human beings - then about myself.
I'm a late bloomer.
We're all very fond of a black box in our living room that works on diminishment of images, that spoons somebody up in a very limited way. It can be a reduction at its worst.
I like being part of a team.
1977 is the year I made my first movie. Shortly after, I was offered quite nice roles in television. The general consensus among everyone was that I'd be out of my mind to do that.
Anytime I had a date, it was at the Sadie Hawkins Day dance.
For me, acting has often been solitary. You're all together, and then boom, you're gone.
Every child in America fantasizes about running wild in the White House for a few minutes.
I don't know if I've ever read a movie that's as strange and unpredictable and hilarious and wonderful as the stuff we're doing on 'The Last Man on Earth.' It's jaw-dropping every week when I get a script, because it goes to such strange places.
New York had this wild beat that anybody could dance to. It was very nurturing to young people.
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 would like to think that in America, as time goes on, you gain freedom, not lose freedom.
Acting was far from my world. I rarely saw a play. I never met a real actress; they seemed unreal.
My heritage, many generations back, is Dutch and it was fun to go where nobody asked me how to pronounce my name.
I had two wonderful teachers: Sanford Melsner and Fred Kareman.
I think the secret to what Jim Henson did, ultimately, is that he understood how to cut through to the... I know this sounds corny... but the child inside of you.
I wasn't making any money, but I didn't feel unsuccessful because of that. You can do that in New York but not in Hollywood. In Hollywood, it is how much money you make.
That's my name. I know it's difficult, and it's not pretty, but it's my name.
I didn't work for a year and a half after 'Melvin and Howard' because all I was being offered was silly parts.
If you want to grow up and do what I do for a living - be an actress - my advice to you is read as much as you can.
I don't worry when I go away for a while. I think there is a place for me. It may not be at the top of the heap. But that doesn't bother me, either. I think I will always be able to get work - which is the only thing I have ever really been interested in.
I've chosen all my films very carefully. I know that I've had better parts in some films than in others. But the films I do are the ones I want to see when I read the screenplays. I guess you can basically say that I've just done things I loved when I read them.
I love to play horrible, evil, mean people.
I actually believed if I behaved myself and if I made straight A's and if I was good enough, I could save my dad's life. And every single time he had a heart attack, I knew what I had done that caused it.
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 want women, especially young women, to create a world where your success is not based on being young.
You've never seen anything until you've seen David Mamet be an Edwardian lady. He always conveys what he means, but he's so... masculine.
If there's an addiction in the Clinton family, it's to problem solving.
When you spend three months of your life doing a movie, it's important to enjoy yourself.
Writing is essentially an internal process.
I'm kind of a laugh junkie. It's what I appreciate in life, because life is rich and sometimes it's hard, and I really, really love to laugh and gravitate towards people who make me laugh.