Mary Steenburgen Quotes
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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.
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My dad had a series of heart attacks when I was a little girl, and our world was shaped by these huge, traumatic events.
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Our culture loves movies and TV, which is wonderful, but there's something a little bit passive sometimes about watching, because you're looking at other people's imagination at work.
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I love writing music.
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There's no strategy involved in my career decisions. I do whatever roles make my heart beat faster.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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'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.
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When you spend three months of your life doing a movie, it's important to enjoy yourself.
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I have never had any success in planning my life, really.
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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.
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I wrote my first song when I was 54 years old.
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Christopher Lloyd was actually the first person - or certainly one of the first few - who ever spoke to me on film.
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For me, acting has often been solitary. You're all together, and then boom, you're gone.
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I've never been able to write a movie script. I respect that skill so much, but it's not been the way my brain works.
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I have hundreds of songs.
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'Step Brothers' is probably the film the most people who approach me want to talk about.
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My heritage, many generations back, is Dutch and it was fun to go where nobody asked me how to pronounce my name.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.