Annette Bening Quotes
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I have huge chunks of time when I'm not working.
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I never thought my private life would be newsworthy.
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If you can open people's hearts first, then maybe people's minds get opened after that.
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Glamour is really fun.
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Somebody said something really smart: It's like you end up being the defense attorney for your role. Your job is to defend their point of view. You're fighting for what they want. You learn that in acting school - it's Acting 1A: 'What do you want? What's in the way?'
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I think when you're at your best as an actor, it is cathartic.
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I'm interested in writing that explores all sides of human beings.
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Sometimes you're reading something, and you don't know it will be important in your life. You're reading this script, and you start to get involved. It's not an intellectual experience.
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There are so many different kinds of relationships, so it's sort of difficult to define what is considered normal.
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When I started in the theater, I'd do plays by Shakespeare or Ibsen or Chekhov, and they all created great women's roles.
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I think people have a right to their point of view.
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Find the story you want to tell. If you don't want to write it, find somebody to write it.
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We all get lost along the way, but hopefully we figure out some sort of path. It helps if you can imagine the process as well as the goal. Those kinds of dreams are easier to achieve.
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I think what's interesting about the whole paparazzi thing is that unless you're Brad Pitt or Madonna, you can pretty much avoid it. You know when you're going to an opening that you will be photographed, so that's fine. And you know the restaurants that have paparazzi, so you don't go to them.
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It's easier to see in someone else, another actor, how they kind of disappear and then this other persona appears. A great actor is a thing of mystery.
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I've tried to take roles with great demands.
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Acting is not about being famous, it's about exploring the human soul.
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What really motivates you to try to work things out as an actor is in large part fear, because you want to get into that narrative and bring the audience along.
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I wanted to be a classical actress. I plodded along. I went to junior college in San Francisco, I was in a Repertory Company. My hero was Eva Le Gallienne, who was a great theater actress at the turn of the century who created her own company, and she wrote these hilarious autobiographies at the time.
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I still remember the five points of salesmanship: attention, interest, conviction, desire and close.
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It's always 'busy' with four children; it's chaos.
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My dad was in the life insurance business, so I learned about selling when I was about 14 because I started working as a secretary.
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I read 'Game Change.' If you want to relive the campaign, that book is unbelievable. It's great. It's the book of that campaign. It brought all the memories back of everything with Clinton and Obama, and Sarah Palin and McCain, and choosing her, and John Edwards. It was an interesting book.
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A lot of directors in my experience are very receptive. They see what you do first, and then they want to find a place to put the camera, and they tweak you here and there.