Annette Bening
Acting is not about being famous, it's about exploring the human soul.Collection: Famous
It's hard to make a living in this business. Unions aren't as strong as they used to be. For a journeyman actor - someone who doesn't have a famous name but has consistent work in theater or film or TV - it has become harder to get through, harder to raise a family.Collection: Famous
Most women would say they relate to 'Hedda Gabler' - there's a part of her in them. Ibsen was writing about a deep ambivalence that many women feel about domesticity. I think about myself and friends of mine - we have some of Hedda's qualities and traits.
I've made some movies that I really loved that nobody saw.
I am in awe of Ruth Draper.
I'm interested in writing that explores all sides of human beings.
I find the reality of our emotional lives interesting.
I like that I've been through things, that when something happens, it resonates with something that already happened. It's not that things like loss are more or less painful. But they're deeper. I find that fascinating.
Our children see us a certain way, and we want to be seen by them in a certain way. I certainly want to be a strong, stable, loving, consistent presence in my children's lives. But we are human beings, too.
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.
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.
I think in the past, around the time that method acting became so prevalent, it used to be that American actors were thought to be the kind that would work more from the inside out, and that the English actors worked more from the outside in.
I always wonder about people's history and their lives, especially people that are a little bit more distant, who obviously have had some kind of a thing, and you know there's some reason why they're not able to connect. It's not because they don't want to. They don't have the ability.
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.
I still remember the five points of salesmanship: attention, interest, conviction, desire and close.
I never felt like I had made it.
I'm still very critical of myself in film.
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.
I feel very, very lucky to have come from the family I did. We have our dysfunctions and our problems, just like any family. But my parents are extremely loving people.
There's so much of our psychological makeup which is impermissible for us to explore because it's inappropriate or perverse or scary. I'm interested in exploring that in myself. I try to be honest with myself about everything that I feel. I'm not saying I'm able to do that all the time, but it's something I'm interested in.
When I watch my kids, and I see the primal level at which the sibling relationships are formed, then I completely understand what these unresolved adult sibling problems are based on. You know, 'Mom liked you better' and, 'You got your own room and I didn't.'
The time I spend with my kids informs every fiber of who I am.
Even with a stable character, you want something surprising to happen, hopefully because that's what the camera loves the most. That's what is great about film.
It's kind of a mystery to me, as far as my own life experiences and what I've witnessed - why some people can just move on through traumatic experiences, in childhood particularly, and why other people are just paralyzed by it. I just don't know how and why that is.
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.
I've always been pretty levelheaded. In show business, you need to have a certain internal stability.
My character in 'Running With Scissors' is manic-depressive. She starts out as a wonderfully eccentric person, and then descends into a terrible illness.
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.
If you're an actor, you have to find a way to make peace with all the media attention.
I've played parts that were just likable people, and there's a certain pleasure in that. And that's that.
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?'
It's always 'busy' with four children; it's chaos.
I don't really have a choice. I'm getting older.
I think for all of us, as we age, there are always a few moments when you are shocked.
Five billion people have played Hamlet. 'To be or not to be.' And how do you do that and find your way into your own journey, your own way of telling it?
I love the luxury of the camera. The camera does so much for you. I like the secrets a camera can tell.
I've tried to take roles with great demands.
I'm lucky: almost all my family has lived to be very old. I have one grandfather who lived to be 100.
My mother is not somebody who's troubled by aging.
When I look at women, older than I am, in their 50s, 60, 70s, 80s, and I see women that I admire, I think, 'Oh, I get it; that's how I'm going to be.' I'm not scared. I want to be that.
There are so many different kinds of relationships, so it's sort of difficult to define what is considered normal.
My husband and I have very similar backgrounds even though we're years apart. So there are a lot of things that we basically share.
I never speak for my husband, and I never speak for my children. It's a rule. Believe me, it is.
I think when you're at your best as an actor, it is cathartic.
I think you sort of shed skins as you go along in life. You get into your 40s, and you feel like, 'OK, no more pretending.' You get to just be who you are.
I'm certainly not a perfect mother, but I am an avid mother, let me put it that way.
I love being busy, and I love having a lot going on; it's exciting.
I feel that certain things are best kept inside a family and not discussed with anyone else.
To me, I didn't think of acting as being a young thing only.
If you can open people's hearts first, then maybe people's minds get opened after that.