Rachel Weisz
I was advised by an American agent when I was about 19 to change my surname.
I love the way girls in London dress; it's so different to the American 'blow-dry and immaculate grooming' thing.
As a child I was the best tree climber in our neighbourhood, I was like a little monkey. I've never been afraid of hurting myself or a little physical discomfort.
I moved to New York last year and I love it. It's a huge change and I've always wanted to spend time there. It's like a more intense London, and everything's up a few notches. The lights are brighter, the pace is faster and the food's better.
I've always been fascinated by activists, people who will devote their life to a cause, people who go to India and to Africa and put their life in jeopardy to do what they believe is right.
If I went out in killer heels and full makeup, blow dry, the whole thing - anyone dressed up like that could be intimidating to men and women, really. It's so, look at me. Do you know what I mean? But I love women.
It's also that comedians don't have the kind of narcissism that actors have. They're writers who perform their own material. It's more interesting. And they're sexy because they risk more. Stand-up comedians risk more than anyone.
I'm very drawn to characters who are very flawed. I'm less interested in characters who are just good or bad, because to me then they're not real people.
I didn't think the teachers had the right to tell me what to do. I would just disobey, talk in the classroom, get very bad grades.
I'm very successful and do lots of films but I've never actually done anything extraordinary.
You never know how things will turn out. And you can't really say it turned out wrong. Whatever happens, happens. The important thing is that you followed your gut.Collection: Important
It's hard to remember that life is a miracle. We're just living it and we forget that.Collection: Miracle
Fear is like the steam that fires the combustion engine. You need fear to get a performance going.Collection: Fire
In reality, the main thing that keeps me awake at night is probably the destruction of the planet that's what gets me pretty upset.Collection: Night
I'm pretty private about my neuroses. You're not neurotic if you talk to yourself - everyone does - you're only neurotic if you hear an answer.Collection: Funny
I'd like to be wanted for my body, too! As an actor I want to play all different kinds of women - independent women but also very vulnerable women.Collection: Independent
I am proud of what I am. I am a librarian.Collection: Proud
I think if you ask the audience to like you, it's all over.Collection: Thinking
I just think that things get easier as you get older and wiser and more experienced. You get more confident about who you are as you get older. I find that really comforting.Collection: Thinking
I think mystery is kind of great. I don't know anything about Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn or Ava Gardner - not really - and I like that. I love watching their movies because they're my personal movie stars. I don't know what they eat and who their trainer is.Collection: Stars
I just kind of muddled through in my 20s. I did whatever I got offered, to be honest, to pay the bills. I didn't really know what I was doing. There are some actors in their 20s who are very sure. I wasn't very sure what I was doing. I feel like I've only really just got going.Collection: Honest
Well, I'm not at all like the tough, sexy femme fatale in Confidence but it's fun to play people who're really different from you, from different cultures and places. I suppose I'm a bit quieter than most of the people I play.Collection: Sexy
The bond between mother and baby is so interesting. Women have been giving birth since the beginning of time, but when it happens to you it feels like a miracle.Collection: Mother
At the end of the day, flirting is a pretty universal language. Americans are more direct. British people are more indirect about everythingCollection: Flirting
The thing about acting is even if you get technically more skilled at what you do, every time you begin a film or a play you're terrified. You don't know if you're going to pull it off. Every film and every story has its own set of challenges. I've never felt like, oh yeah, that's it, nailed it! You can never sit and rest. That's why it's such an exciting job. It's beginning again every time you begin again. New story, new character, new place, new time, new director. It's like moving to a different planet and trying to figure out how to live there.Collection: Moving
I prefer smaller movies because they tend to be more about character than about story.Collection: Character
I could never write. I would just be too lonely. What's great about acting is, it's so collaborative.Collection: Lonely
If you try to go for a laugh, it's death to the comedy. Personally, that's how I approach comedy. But I'm no expert.Collection: Laughing
I do read movie blogs. I think what's really interesting - Probably everyone says this, but what's interesting is it, it takes away the power, from the newspaper magnates, so be it Murdoch or whatever. I mean, it's like the people taking it back. Isn't it? I mean, do people talk about this all the time?Collection: Mean
With a group of people, a troupe of actors in the theater, you go out on tour, and you're like a traveling circus. It's very sociable, and there's a real community, and it's very intense, and then you may never see them again. That was very appealing. I mean, it wasn't consciously appealing, but I think a lot of actors like that.Collection: Real
Normally, I would do research. For The Constant Gardener, I played an activist, so I went to meet activists. You can find them dotted around. But with The Brothers Bloom, I couldn't meet a nutty heiress who lived in a bubble in a mansion. There was no one to meet. So this was just an active imagining, a daydream.Collection: Brother
I like acting too much and it's too, I'm just too busy doing that and I'm too hungry for it, to get behind the camera. I mean, unless I could act in it, too. I don't think I've got the right brain. I'm too disorganized.Collection: Mean
When you're doing comedy, you're not trying to be funny. I think things are funny when the character is taking it totally seriously. I think when people are winking, it becomes slapstick, it becomes something else.Collection: Character
Organized, yeah. And those who are so sure that their God is the right God that they believe it's ok to kill another person who doesn't believe in their God.Collection: Believe
I was offered more work after the Oscar. When I was younger, I would take whatever I was offered because it was money and work and experience. In a way, choosing is the hard part. I know that's a luxury problem, but it's true. I try to go where passion takes me.Collection: Passion
I think that in big-budget movies there's a lot of other stuff going on besides acting, like special effects.Collection: Thinking
To come to the Oscars for the first time and be seven months pregnant is quite a thing!Collection: Seven Months
You know, in America, Christian fundamentalism vs. science. You know, be it teaching Darwinian evolutionary theory or stem cell res- You know, the whole thing, and then the issue of women being educated in Middle Eastern - I mean, it just seems so contemporary. In terms of spirituality, it's interesting because I actually think (her character in Agora) Hypatia is very spiritual.Collection: Christian
You know, you can't see or touch and isn't embodied. But they were all fallible, the Gods. And they would kind of rise and fall. You know, they all, like Achilles, Icarus, you know, they all had their high points and their low points.Collection: Fall
The Pagan model of religion because, in the Pagan model, there were lots and lots of Gods and Goddesses. They were all incredibly beautiful and there were statues of them everywhere, which is the equivalent of magazines, or whatever, today. And they were fallible, which is different from being mono-, you know, Jewish or Islam (where) you have the infallible, monotheistic God.Collection: Beautiful
Seeing someone you know be good at something is really appealing. Seeing how Darren Aronofsky behaved on set, it was another aspect of him, the director. He'd never directed me at home in the kitchen before. It was just seeing a whole other aspect of someone. It was really, really exciting. I loved it.Collection: Home
I would LOVE to be in the Star Trek sequel! Yeah! I would love to! I better write that letter to J.J.[Abrahams]Collection: Stars
And I guess, I guess it's a humanist film. It's not really a spiritual film and it's, you know, it's saying that we're all one tribe of humans and we're on this little rock, floating through the universe and (Amenabar) has these (transitional shots of) POVs where you see humans like ants.Collection: Spiritual
I wasn't a person who was longing forever to have a baby; the desire came up suddenly.Collection: Baby
People believe in you more after you've won an Oscar, but it's up to you what choices you make.Collection: Believe
When I play a part, I never think about likability.Collection: Thinking
He [John Le Carré] really paid tribute to the people who are willing to risk their own lives to fight injustice - they are greater men and women than I.Collection: Fighting
(Human) beings, in Pagan times would kind of like, listen to the stories and, they could kind of, identify - . They were, like, bigger than them and more successful than them or more beautiful, but they had these human fallibilities. Which is like celebrities now. It's like, 'oh, she's in rehab. Oh, she's unfaithful. Oh, they're divorced. Oh, she's anorexic. Oh, he's had a nose job.' You know, whatever it might be.Collection: Beautiful
Now we're in a recession, and at war, so people want to see this chihuahua movie, The Fountain. To be told to come to terms with death, that death is the road to all - it's a very intense subject. But as with movies that are very unusual, that have come to be thought of as very interesting, one finds out at the time that they were not understood. So who knows? We'll see. A lot of people really, really loved it, and a lot of people didn't get it.Collection: War