Blythe Danner
I loved the first Christmas I had in England.Collection: Christmas
When I was beginning, a young actor could go from repertory company to repertory company. I did that and loved it. I was also lucky.
Acting is really only part of my life. I'm addicted to it.
Actors are very generous.
I feel a little guilty only being an actor.
I feel that its our children who do give us hope because they are the ones who are going to save the world.
I loved doing Shakespeare. My two favorite roles, in fact, have been Viola in Twelfth Night and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
I think I have a lot of crazy layers.
I think one of my very favorite films of all time was with Peter Sellers when he played Chauncey, the gardener. Being There.
I try to avoid a specific image. I seek to play as many different women as I can to avoid having a label put on me.
I was raised in a time where children were still seen and not heard basically, so I think a lot of us in my generation went the other way and just tried to be as much more liberal and open and we're still paying for it.
I've always just adored music. It's my first love, really. I admire and respect people in the music business. You really have to work hard and diligently. Sometimes actors can be lazy and get away with it, but you can't do that if you're a musician.
I've been very lucky. I wanted to be an actress, but I didn't really have the drive to sell myself. Fortunately I had a terrific agent in New York who kept me going from job to job.
I've kept my sanity in this business by trying out for a role and then going home and trying to forget about it.
It was in high school that I first became interested in acting. We put on lots of plays.
Just look at my face. Its an extraordinary experience. All of my friends who are grandparents have been saying, just wait, a bit cynically, but its just extraordinary. You feel like a child again yourself. Just walking on air.
Maybe subconsciously I've kept activism separate from acting because it's important to me in a more profound way.
Mostly, I spend my time being a mother to my two children, working in my organic garden, raising masses of sweet peas, being passionately involved in conservation, recycling and solar energy.
Onstage or in films, you do affect peoples' lives, and sometimes that's very gratifying. But still, there's this little voice that says you should be doing something that matters.
Whether you're on TV or on the stage, you have to work hard to stay fresh, real, and full of energy. You can't settle back. You always have to stay on your toes.
You learn more discipline in the theatre than you do in movies or TV. You're on stage every night and you have to sustain your energy level tor several hours.
I live in New York, and when you're older and widowed, it's a perfect place because you just don't feel lonely there, and, luckily, I like my own company, too.
I really pulled back on my career when the kids were young and my husband and I made a pact never to work while the other one was.
My theory in anything you do is to keep exploring, keep digging deeper to find new stuff.
I've always had a middling kind of a career, not great highs and great lows.
I travel so much when I work, I've really been happy to do 'Nice Work' because I feel like a true New Yorker again. I have my little regimen during the day, and I can take advantage of the museums and the things that I love. And people watching!
My family was very musical. My brother is an opera singer; my parents both sang.
My earliest memories of Gwyneth first singing is in bed when we would make up songs. The most I could do was harmonize, like, a third above, and at two years old, she'd be doing sixths. I said, 'Where in the world did that come from?' She'd just make up songs.
I don't give my advice unless it's asked for.
My husband was very special and very funny and outspoken, and he would have a black and blue every so often because under the table, I'd say, 'Don't say that!'
Singing and dancing will never grow old for me - I'd like to do that until I'm... actually, I think I'd like to drop dead onstage. I think that'd be just great.
Being a grandmother is probably the most important thing to me. I have two really rambunctious little ones, and I love spending time with them.
I really do like being independent, and I don't want to have to rely on anyone else to cart me around if I break a bone.
Whatever comes my way I'm basically interested in.
That's what's so wonderful about being in this business because you're constantly surprised. You have to be up for anything.
My feeling is that if there are that many billions of stars, maybe someone is saying exactly what I'm saying at this moment. I don't know. It's not something I'm obsessed by or think about all the time, but I certainly open to thinking it could be.
I am always happiest in an ensemble.
I don't read critics, and I don't care what they say. You can't let them steal your soul. You do what the director and production is committed to doing. I just think it's terrible that critics have the power to keep people away from a good production.
I got to Broadway a year after I came to New York. I starred in 'Butterflies Are Free' and got a Tony for it. Right out of the gate. Maybe that's why I wasn't very gracious about it. I wasn't driven. And right after 'Butterflies Are Free', I got married and then started a family. I always wanted that.
You cannot be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, and the perfect actor all at the same time.
For a woman who's a widow and pretty much a loner, I can walk out, and I'm surrounded by NYU kids. The energy jumps off the sidewalks, and I never feel sad or bored.
We all have an obligation as citizens of this earth to leave the world a healthier, cleaner, and better place for our children and future generations.Collection: Children
You live long enough, you lose enough people, you learn to appreciate the memories you have and stop begrudging the ones you never got to make.Collection: Memories
I'm not an actor who can constantly pick and choose, I try to get the best of what's there.Collection: Trying
I'm mostly a jazz fan and I've never really been into rock 'n' roll music — although I guess Coldplay isn't really rock 'n' roll — but he's made me a convert. I do go to their concerts whenever we're in the same town and I don't even have to wear earplugs any more, which I did in the beginning.Collection: Rocks
Film has always been hard for me, I'm basically a stage actress. I never felt comfortable in front of the camera.Collection: Cameras
I can't always pick and choose, but I try very hard to take the roles where they are a bit more human. Sometimes there's a hilarious thing that comes along and it might not be the most interesting character, but I'm just delighted to be able to do something.Collection: Character
Part of me says that no life will work if I can't make this one right.Collection: Meaningful