Ellen Barkin Quotes
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You've got a movie where the pro-choice family gives their daughter no choice. The pro-life family murders. What seems to be the good mother, the kind of hippie painter, sweet and cute mother has no love for her daughter really.
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I'm Method trained. How is this character like me? What does she think of her mother? What does her mother think of her? It's like construction, and then, yes, you hope you're talented and that the universe aligns and captures the kind of laborer's work you've done and whatever else sprinkles down on you, and it's all caught on film or onstage.
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The way Hollywood portrays mothers - you're either all good and saint-like, or you're all bad. And I think the real honesty of motherhood is not given a voice in movies. I miss that as an audience member.
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When a 12-year-old, a 13-year-old, so desperately wants a baby what she's looking for is the kind of unconditional love a child gives a mother and a mother gives a child.
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I wish I had a little more ambition. But then what would I do? Turn down more roles with more vehemence? Me no likey worky.
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I just would never go audition, and yet I was in very visible places where people would come looking for actors. I say I'm lazy, though I'm sure if I were in therapy for a lot of years, it would turn out to be a lot more than laziness. After awhile, it was, like, too embarrassing for me not to go on auditions. I had to be humiliated into it.
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Would you just strap some toe shoes on and dance 'Swan Lake?' No. Would you just put a violin in your hand and - ? No. I felt that way about acting, and I was taught to feel that way. I didn't come to it on my own.
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Men who love their mothers treat women wonderfully. And they have enormous respect for women.
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I remember my first friend who got sick. It was 1981, and the disease was called the gay cancer. I don't think the word 'AIDS' came out until '84. I just remember it being terrifying as more people got sick. We didn't know how you could catch it, you heard all kinds of crazy things.
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Old is the new sexy.
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I have skinny genes. My mother weighs 90 pounds.
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My first movie was 'Diner.' My second movie was 'Tender Mercies.' I did really good work.
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When they make a woman's picture, they treat it like a 'woman's picture.' In the '40s, they didn't treat Joan Crawford movies like that, but as the big movies of their year. I'm upset that there's no 'Terminator' with a woman in Arnold Schwarzenegger's role. Because that would make just as much money.
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When I played Leonardo DiCaprio's mother, they liked that Leo had very hooded eyes and a rounded nose with a ball. They said, They look like they could be mother and son.
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No more bare bodies in film scenes for me. For my children's sake, I must stop. The other kids at school keep throwing it up to my children, and they are not kind.
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I studied acting for 10 years before I went for an audition. I studied with Lee Strasberg and Actors Studio teachers, and went to the High School of Performing Arts.
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I'd never say I'll never have a facelift, but I'm way too scared of looking like a different person. I have no philosophical or political position on plastic surgery; I just don't want to look crazy. And I don't like not being able to tell how old someone is: It's creepy.
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Gabriel Byrne is an extraordinary human being. We have two extraordinary kids and we work at it. We were always friends. He stuck by me through very hard times, and I hope he'd say the same about me.
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I would love to do a television show in New York City.
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My husband thinks he's compromising if we have one cook instead of three.
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I have huge hands and feet. I'm 5'6" and wear a size 10 shoe.
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I'm just curious, who's more fit to raise a child? A loving committed same-sex couple or an unmarried 15-year-old with no income and really no skills to parent?
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But one of the hardest things for me to do was to access anger. I could do it on stage. But when I did it on film it was hard for me. That probably has to do with the intimacy of film. And my own personal issues with expressing anger. So I had to learn how to do that.
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Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.