Laura Linney
Traits like humility, courage, and empathy are easily overlooked - but it's immensely important to find them in your closest relationships.Collection: Courage
Just because you're not famous, doesn't mean you're not good.Collection: Famous
A magnetic personality doesn't necessarily indicate a good heart.Collection: Good
I had learning disabilities, and I couldn't express myself in the written word.Collection: Learning
It is always good to explore the stuff you don't agree with, to try and understand a different lifestyle or foreign worldview. I like to be challenged in that way, and always end up learning something I didn't know.Collection: Learning
I had a good imagination and I still have one; a child-like imagination that hasn't gone away.Collection: Imagination
I believe that no matter what you do in life, if you learn the basics through theater, it will help you in everything else - problem solving, communication, discipline, all of that stuff.Collection: Communication
I get cold - really cold - when I travel.Collection: Travel
You know when someone's over-flattering you in a way. You smile but you can't believe it.Collection: Smile
Fear, anxiety and neurosis: that's just in the suitcase when you're an actor.
What I find so interesting about people is the choices they make, and how that effects their behavior, their sense of self and their relationships.
I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write. Language and punctuation is used specifically, and most of the time actors can find wonderful clues about character in the rhythm and cadence of the language used.
I am very lucky, because for the most part people are very nice to me, and I am still able to go about my life and ride the subway and all that.
My parents were divorced and I would spend weekends with my father.
I love 70's music.
I'm very hard on my bags because I tend to carry a lot of stuff with me.
I certainly didn't have a nanny.
I hope that anyone I worked with wouldn't exploit our relationship.
I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side.
If you have two parents who have to work, who want to work, you need to have someone to guide your child.
I'm lucky because I don't like being in the sun a whole lot, just because the repercussions for me - I feel it, I go very red.
Fame didn't happen to me in my 20s, it has been a gradual thing which probably makes it easier to deal with.
I could have gone to the gym for three hours a day and bought into all that, but I just wasn't interested.
I can scarcely stand to have a manicure. I have to have them because you don't want to look like a disgusting human being - it's self-care and it has to happen, but I get very restless.
I always laugh to myself when I listen to some really big A-list star saying that they are just a normal person.
I just want to say, 'Go work! It doesn't matter what it is. Work begets work. Just go!'
I tend to make low-budget movies but, yeah, I make more money than I ever thought I would make.
With big, emotional roles it's very easy, especially if you've grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character.
I'm profoundly lucky. I really like it. I really like my work. I've liked it since I was 5 years old.
The only really conscious decision I made was to cast my net wide and if the work was good, to do it.
You can watch someone on-stage cry and cry - but in the audience you feel nothing. It's easy to become indulgent. For me, what's important is the story first.
My family is from the South, and I can remember all those ladies I grew up with, like my great-aunts, who had handkerchiefs. There's something sweet about them.
You have to relish the challenge of television.
I crave a cone of silence every once in while.
People can't really place me. They're not really sure who I am. Sometimes they think I'm Helen Hunt. Sometimes they think I'm Laura Dern.
I've seen the greatest actors in the world, transcendent talents, who can't find a home.
Tanning is tricky, because a lot of people just look orange.
I have a bag with a toothbrush and toothpaste and all the things I might need during the day. I call the bag my trailer. Sometimes you don't have a trailer, so that's my trailer.
I think the way we talk about cancer has really evolved. I remember the way my grandmother used to talk about it, like a death sentence, no-one would even mention the word.
I've always thought that I'm sexy in my own right, but not in a way that people thought was bankable.
At school I was always trying to con my teachers into letting me act out book reports instead of writing them.
I don't consider myself a celebrity and I don't consider myself a star.
I grew up in Manhattan and, since my father was a playwright, all I ever wanted to be was a stage actress.
It's always nice when you do something and it's well received as opposed to the other way which God knows happens to everybody. When the good times come around, you take a deep breath, appreciate it, but not take it too seriously.
The thing about death is that it's honest.
I think everyone's experience with a terminal disease is so deeply personal and unique to the person, the context in which they're living and the relationships that they have.
For me to have the opportunity to stay with one character for, God willing, a long period of time, is really exciting.
The goal seems to me at times just to be business first.
I mean, the idea of losing a parent is really inconceivable. I think there's just an undertone of dread about the subject, so people don't talk about it and don't prepare for it.
I love to work in all sorts of different situations.