Sissy Spacek
I've been into exercise my whole life, been a runner and been into health and fitness always.Collection: Health
Nature is my church. The wind in the trees and the bugs and the frogs. All those things are comfort to me.Collection: Nature
You know, I don't know what the future will bring, but I'm ready for whatever comes!Collection: Future
I think giving up people is a difficult thing.
For me, life is a bowl of cherries.
I am a woman of simple tastes.
My biggest thrill in life is to read in the afternoon until I fall asleep and take a nap.
Jingle taps on the majorette boots were an important part of a little girl growing up in the South.
I wanted to be Joni Mitchell.
I'm not Meryl Streep. My God - she's the greatest actor that ever lived. It's sad that ordinary actors like me are compared to her.
I'm drawn to ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, which is a big part of the human condition.
When I first met David Lynch, he was living in the stables of the American Film Institute... He'd work all night and have his crew lock him in during the day, and he'd sleep.
You need to live life to be able to have something to draw from.
My cousin, Rip Torn, persuaded me not to change my name. You shouldn't change what you are in the search for success.
I go where the good work is being done.
I hated country music growing up, but it gets in your bone marrow, kind of like a disease.
Most things in my life I had before leaving home. Values, support, great family. I was shaped at an early age. A musician playing guitar, I wanted to be a folk singer.
I wanted to put all my family stories down for my girls, and I remember everything so vividly. I just wanted to put everything down while I still can remember it all.
I don't have any regrets, because I think life is like a creek. It kind of meanders along, and you instinctively do the things you are meant to do. There's no great plan except doing really good scripts, meeting great filmmakers. And I have to have something that I can bring to the role.
Junior and senior high school years were not a good time.
I didn't worry about leaving the fast lane - I was just so consumed with my baby that it seemed like the right thing to do. I never felt like I left New York, though. If you've lived in a place and loved it, you never feel like you left it.
I had a dozen years to act before starting a family, then found that motherhood dwarfed everything else. Once or twice a year, I take a project that appeals to me for its redeeming social value.
You don't forget the movies, but you forget the details of them.
There's a real danger in trying to stay king of the mountain. You stop taking risks, you stop being as creative, because you're trying to maintain a position. Apart from anything else that really takes the fun out of it.
When I started out in independent films in the early '70s, we did everything for the love of art. It wasn't about money and stardom. That was what we were reacting against. You'd die before you'd be bought.
If I hadn't left Texas, I might not have met the director Terrence Malick, and I wouldn't have met my husband and I wouldn't have had the children that I've had. Life is interesting like that.
I lived an idyllic 'Huckleberry Finn' life in a tiny town. Climbing trees. Tagging after brothers. Happy. Barefoot on my pony. It was 'To Kill a Mockingbird'-esque.
My parents were devoted. Civic minded. We had family counsels. Three of us children against two of them. We lived a 'Leave It to Beaver' time.
The name Sissy came because my brothers called me that.
I've always been a people-watcher, and as an actor, later, I just mined all those little details.
Texas is just so rich with characters. Women who live alone in a little house on a thousand acres with nothing but cattle and a pickup truck. And an airplane.
I had no fear 'cause it seemed everyone in the audience always applauded whatever I did. Course, maybe it was because I always seemed to know everyone in the audience.
Our perception of celebrities in Hollywood is not the reality. The reality of our lives is so much like everyone else's life. We have family members we love, everyone gets up in the morning, they have three meals a day and they go about their business.
Fame sweeps you away. I had to go home every six months to remember who I am.
I've not had a mean life.
I'm a fool for a good role in a creative piece where there are really such talented writers and wonderful actors.
It's a whole other way of working when you work in films: You know exactly the arc of your character.
There have been several television movies, 'Carrie 2,' two musicals! I remember thinking, the first time there was a musical on Broadway, 'Oh my gosh! The people who ordinarily go to the theaters, that's not really the audience.'
I think that no human gets away unscathed in this old life. We've all experienced loss and grief and pain and tragedy.
I love the women I've played.
I connect with just plain old everyday people. Human behavior fascinates me, the people who are the nuts and bolts of this country who help hold up the world.
The important thing is to be part of a good project with good, talented people.
For me, I never really wanted to be in a 'Sissy Spacek' vehicle. That was not my intention. I got to be the 'Everygirl.'
Just about every town in Texas has a beauty pageant. Ours was called The Dogwood Fiesta. I was in one of those. I played the guitar and sang - and lost.
I think my mother's family came on the Mayflower from England - D.A.R., you know.
My father's family is German and Czech.
I like horseback riding. I like to hike. I play guitar and sing.
I'm not very big. But I've got a big bark and a lot of heart.
For a while, I just sang at a steakhouse. I would go from table to table and really just survived on tips.
Music is my thing. In fact, that's what I wanted to do. I thought of myself as a musician. I had never thought about acting.