157 quotes found
"I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and I believe in miracles."
"I am more than ever awed and overwhelmed by the monumental talents it was my great, great privilege to work for and with. There is therefore no way I can thank you for this beautiful award without thanking all of them, because it is they who helped and honed, triggered and taught, pushed and pulled, dressed and photographed — and with endless patience and kindness and gentleness, guided and nurtured a totally unknown, insecure, inexperienced, skinny broad into a marketable commodity. I am proud to have been in a business that gives pleasure, creates beauty, and awakens our conscience, arouses compassion, and perhaps most importantly, gives millions a respite from our so violent world. Thank you, Screen Actors Guild and friends, for this huge honor — and for giving me this unique opportunity to express my deepest gratitude and love to all of those who have given me a career that has brought me nothing but happiness."
"I myself was born with an enormous need for affection and a terrible need to give it"
"Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering — because you can't take it all in at once."
"I can testify to what UNICEF means to children, because I was among those who received food and medical relief right after World War II, I have a long-lasting gratitude and trust for what UNICEF does."
"Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same."
"Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being’s suffering. Nothing — not a career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we’re going to survive with dignity."
"I'm half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I'd be in a hell of a mess!"
"You have to look at yourself objectively. Analyze yourself like an instrument. You have to be absolutely frank with yourself. Face your handicaps, don't try to hide them. Instead, develop something else."
"I can take long walks, as I understand Greta Garbo does, and no one interferes with my thoughts and tranquility. Come to think of it, the other day I was on Fifth Avenue in New York and I saw a woman who could very well have been Garbo; I was a bit tempted to go up to her, but then I thought, "My God, practice what you preach! If it is her, you'll be intruding — just the thing you don't like yourself.""
"As a child, I was taught that it was bad manners to bring attention to yourself, and to never, ever make a spectacle of yourself … All of which I've earned a living doing."
"I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people's minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing."
"People associate me with a time when movies were pleasant, when women wore pretty dresses in films and you heard beautiful music. I always love it when people write me and say "I was having a rotten time, and I walked into a cinema and saw one of your movies, and it made such a difference.""
"I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It's probably the most important thing in a person."
"Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist."
"I believe in manicures. I believe in overdressing. I believe in primping at leisure and wearing lipstick. I believe in pink. I believe that loving is the best calorie-burner. I believe in kissing. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls... and I believe in miracles."
"I was determined to wipe Audrey out of my mind by screwing a woman in every country I visited. My plan succeeded, though sometimes with difficulty. When I was in Bangkok, I was with a Thai girl in a boat in one of the klongs. I guess we got too animated, because the boat tipped over and I fell into the filthy water. Back at the hotel I poured alcohol in my ears because I was afraid I'd become infected with the plague. When I got back to Hollywood, I went to Audrey's dressing-room and told her what I had done. You know what she said? "Oh, Bill!" That's all. "Oh, Bill!". Just as though I were some naughty boy. … She was the love of my life."
"Audrey was meek, gentle and ethereal, understated both in her life and in her work. She walked among us with a light pace, as if she didn't want to be noticed. [I regret losing her] as a friend, as a role model, and as a companion to my youthful dreams."
"She is like a portrait by Modigliani where the various distortions are not only interesting in themselves but make a completely satisfying composite."
"Think about it. She was the first woman – with Elizabeth Taylor – to make a million dollars, at a time when women couldn’t open a bank account without their husbands. She could fight her corner. That was thanks to the war, the ballet, her mother."
"It gave her a steely determination, a respect for what it takes to do it. I’ve heard her described as a steel fist in a velvet glove."
"The whole of time would not be long enough to tell you of my joy in being married to you. Joy is not measured just by lovely things: the birth of babies, the song of birds heard together, the fun of holidays — the lyrical-love of lying with you. Joy is to be found, too, in the relief after pain shared, in the good news following bad, in the knowledge of greater closeness after disaster."
"Never once since I met you have I been bored; never once have I not wanted you. And never once, even for a moment, have I not loved you with all my heart."
"Love like that, any woman! If you get the chance, even if it may be a passing thing; even if the void seems all-encompassing when it comes, even if the heart bleeds almost to death, passionate love is worth it, it is worth it, it is worth all of it."
"It is not easy to make an effort and to remember all the little personalia of some one one has loved very much, and by whom one has been loved."
"To have even known such a man as he was is an inestimable boon. To have been with him for so long as a child, to have known so intimately the man who above all others has understood childhood, is indeed a memory on which to look back with thanksgiving and with tears."
"Even in mathematics his whimsical fancy was sometimes suffered to peep out, and little girls who learnt the rudiments of calculation at his knee found the path they had imagined so thorny set about with roses by reason of the delightful fun with which he would turn a task into a joy. But when the fun was over the little girl would find that she had learnt the lesson (all unknowingly) just the same. Happy little girls who had such a master."
"He had a curiously womanish face, and, in direct contradiction to his real character, there seemed to be little strength in it."
"He would, when engaged in an animated conversation with a friend, talk quickly and well for a few minutes, and then suddenly and without any very apparent cause would begin to stutter so much, that it was often difficult to understand him."
"He had great ideas upon the importance of a regular and almost daily visit to the dentist. He himself went to a dentist as he would have gone to a hairdresser's, and he insisted that all the little girls he knew should go too."
"When the rest of the congregation rose at the entrance of the choir he kept his seat. He argued that rising to one's feet at such a time tended to make the choir-boys conceited."
"We had so little to eat, we were freezing all the time, but the sheer joy of being able to act fed our souls."
"The terrible consequences of being Jewish that my grandmother faced are ones endured by many ethnic groups, and must always be viewed as a brutal example of man's inhumanity to man. I feel honoured to be able to tell her incredible story of strife and survival."
"I know I`m headstrong ."
"As an actress I decided that I was not going to accept being cast in token ethnic roles in film or on TV, nor act any parts that I considered demeaned the portrayal of a non-British character. To illustrate this point; after seeing me perform Tatiana in Gorky’s Enemies(play) the well-known TV director, and very nice man, Chris Menaul offered me the role of the main Russian air hostess in a Malcolm Bradbury BBC TV series. He was taken aback when I turned the part down as I didn’t have any TV credits. I gave some excuse ‘that I thought the part vulgar” but the real reason was that Bradbury had portrayed the Russian air-hostesses in what I considered in a cliched demeaning way and involved a little Russia bashing. I have recently sent him a real explanation via his agent."
"My first tentative efforts in creating my theatre company were mounting John Ford’s `Tis Pity She`s a Whore ”. I asked people for money for my production, even as I found myself canvassing for another cause. This production was not the totally multi-racial cast that I had hoped for but did consist of actors from other cultures and differing accents, and also achieved a very high level of production value and rave reviews. It also provided the springboard for the extremely talented director/ designer couple Declan Donnellan and Nicolas Ormerod, who went onto creating the now world famous Cheek by Jowl company."
"As a little girl my mother used to take me with her to her fittings with her very expensive seamstress. I was dazzled by the beauty of the fabrics and the whole procedure. I still remember the feel of expensive taffeta."
"I myself have experienced the volcanic existential depths of the Greek language. It was during a performance of Medea by Tzeni Karezi at the Herod Atticus theatre in Athens ,when she was pleading to the callous Jason to take pity on her and she used the word ' splachniasou'. 'Pity' is too weak a word to describe the emotional and psychological depths ' splachniasou' expresses. 'Splachna 'is the part of the body where a woman carries her unborn children, the very root of ontological existence. How deep can you get!"
"the great comedic film director Thodoros Maragos , of the well known film 'Mathe Paedi mou Grammata!' wrote a part specially for me , Ms Ortiki in his 12 part ERT1 television series "Emmones Idees"."
"Theatro Technis in North London, where the issues of prejudice against immigrants, the poor, the illiterate were dramatised , and more urgently the exploration of the war crime that constituted the illegal invasion by the Turkish military of CYPRUS, and for which the USA ( especially the diabolical Kissinger ) and the UK had little concern, as the president of Cyprus was the Orthodox Archbishop Makarios, who had the reputation of being a bit of a red. This was a theatre company that practiced political theatre in its purest form! I found myself performing a Greek Cypriot peasant woman driven from her land in the North of Cyprus and expressing her grief at the loss of her home in front of an audience that included refugees who had suffered the same fate but had managed to escape to London. The tears just flowed naturally. It was also at this theatre that I tackled the Mount Everest of acting parts – Medea(play) by Euripides, and which I performed to great reviews and was the performance that put me on the London map as an actress. The whole play was interpreted politically."
"Many of the Greek journalists and TV presenters also seem to share this "progressive intellectualism" which leads Greeks to having to apologize for being Orthodox- What a load of rubbish! Prof Yiannaras with whom I have corresponded then continues with the frightening story about 'the predicted and inevitable and desirable Latinization of our Greek alphabet" quoted by an anonymous source in a periodical Samizdat . Let's get this straight both Greece as well as the Balkan countries that have Kyrilic alphabets should fiercely resist Latinization ."
"Part of my Greek heritage: The call of resistance to the Nazis, when all mainland Europe had succumbed, it was only Greece my Antigone, who resisted and was starved for it."
"My grandmother was a fearless Greek warrioress, and very protective of her land. She literally ordered some Nazi soldiers to get off one of her fields pointing a gun at them."
"..the gift of Orthodoxia : The call by the Christ not to be just good moral and ethical beings, which is where the western Churches stop- but to go beyond that , to be 'theanthropic", to reflect the generosity and magnificence and beauty of the Christ."
"A key moment of my spiritual epiphany was the tale told by the property manager of our apartment block, Mrs Marina. Every year on All Saints Day if I remember correctly, she commemorated the death of her son who died from an overdose. She baked some holy bread, antidoro, and then took it to her parish Church as an offering for evening vespers. When I asked Mrs Marina why she was doing this, she replied simply, "So that Christ speaks to my son and takes pity", as it is on this particular day it is believed that the Christ descends once again into the bowels of hell, not to defeat death this time as in Holy Saturday, but to keep company with the so called damned. For mothers like Mrs Marina fearful that their dead children might inhabit this nether world because of their sins, despair of redemption etc, Christ's visit provides some hope- that He might take pity on them and relieve them of their eternal punishment. Christ as the God that Unshackles the power of Hell and Death , the Resurrected Christ that even reaches out to the damned , and not the Christ of Deo Satisfactio of the heretical western Churches is one of the great glories of Greek Orthodoxy and of Orthodoxy as a whole."
"... without New Testament Greek there would be no Christian Theology, or possibly no Christianity. The Athanasian Creed, the dogma of Christ the Homiousios, of the same essence as the Father , the dogma of Christ, fully God and Fully Human , The dogma of the Holy Trinity , 'that Christ is the incarnation of the indivisible source of the Divine Godhead through the power of the Holy Spirit " could only have been formulated by the Church Fathers within the linguistic structures and concepts provided by early century Greek language and thought., e.g concepts such as the God/man, a concept that which does not exist in the Hebrew and is totally foreign to Hebrew culture. Hence Shelley's assertion that the Greeks /the Hellenes "gave us our religion "."
"Apart from the greatness of Bizos for his role in the dismantling of apartheid, defending Mandela etc , he also manifested a genius in his role as a leading member of the conservative South African Greek community, by drawing historical parallels between the 400 years of slavery that Greece had suffered under the Ottoman Turks and the 300 years or so of repression and cruelty suffered by the Southern African black tribes and mixed race people under the British and then under the Nationalist Afrikaner rule. By using this strategy Bizos was able to balance his fight for justice in South Africa, and synchronously lead the very conservative Greek community in a more progressive direction."
"This is the place (Wits University) where the tension between my parents and myself on account of my political beliefs became pronounced. A photo of me standing at picket line on the WITS side of Jan Smuts avenue during one of the protests appeared in the "Star" newspaper. The local MP from the Nationalist Party Boksburg constituency saw it and made an ominous call to my parents "I didn't know that your daughter was communist!" and put the phone down on them. Of course I wasn't a "communist" but anyone who opposed the regime was automatically labeled as a communist. I ceased my political studies as I didn't wish to cause my parents any extra anxiety or stress ."
"The reason the Internationalist Theatre productions demanded attention was that the directors who had already worked at top theatres like the Royal Court and the Royal Shakespeare Company had agreed to take the risk of directing classical plays with multi-racial casts , that the performance was of a very good standard, and furthermore that many prominent members of the arts establishment, Lindsay Anderson, Cameron MacKintosh, John Barton, Richard Eyre, the great casting director Mary Selway, Stephen Berkoff, Nicolas Roeg , came to see performances by Internationalist Theatre."
"Voulgaris asked me to find film funding for what was to be the last but unfinished film project of Elia Kazan,a personal friend of Voulgaris. The subject of the film was the immigration of the Kazan family from the beleaguered Greek minority communities under Turkish rule in Asia Minor to the safe haven of the USA where the Kazan family settled. I arranged a meeting between Elia Kazan and the London based film financier Frixos Constantini of Poseidon Films at the Grand Bretagne Hotel in Athens. What followed from this meeting is that Mr Constantini put Elia Kazan in touch with Martin Scorsese a personal friend of Mr Constantini and who also runs the production company Cappa films. And so it was that these two giants of US cinema met for the first time. It is also because of these meetings that Paqndelis Voulgaris was able to make"The Brides". Elia Kazan was too old to get film insurance , so Kazan instead brought to Scorseses" the Voulgaris film project "The Brides" , and yet I have to this day never have had a thank you from him. So much for his saintly appearance."
"...this is not the only time that I have stuck out my neck for a Greek film director. With Nikos Nikolaidis I introduced him to Mr Constantini as well , and undertook to send his XXX-rated movie `Singapore Sling` to two of the top film agents in the UK , Jenny Cassarotto and PDF who have now changed their name on account of a merger. Ms Cassarotto was indulgent, but the other agent was so shocked that he treated me as if I was peddling porn. The things I've done for Greece!"
"By the time I got a permit I found that I liked being independent, that I like to do productions that I think are valuable . I did not want to feel that I had left South Africa, my parents and a comfortable life to do rubbishy work"
"I can say that my collaboration with Theatro Technis was a serious milestone in my life. I had the chance to work with George Eugeniou a great director who taught me a great deal"
"They`re powerful parts- all the most powerful parts seem to be written for men....Hamlet has this existentialist crisis .I had one when I was 17. Women are not given that kind of philosophy in their parts""
"My search for justice grew out of the pain I experienced when I saw the ridicule my malformed brother elicited. I became aware of the evil that is prejudice, a form of injustice."
"I arrived at as an undergraduate with two driving passions: a consuming interest for a politics of justice grounded in a Christian theology and acting, as a ‘revelation of the treasures of the human soul’ not as a form of exhibitionism. My search for justice grew out of the pain I experienced when I saw the ridicule my malformed brother elicited. I became aware of the evil that is prejudice, a form of injustice. My urge to redress this prejudice took a more social dimension during my years as a boarder at St Dominic’s Convent, where the great Barbara Hogan matriculated a year later than me though I only got acquainted with her at Wits."
"At the end of my course I realized there was no place for me in South Africa because I found it difficult to function in a society that considered 75% of population inferior, that my community frowned on me as an actress, and my beliefs for a non-racial society now incorporated a fight for the equality for women an anathema to my conservative Greek community. I did not want to spend my life apologizing for who I was."
"Our first play in 1981 was Jean Genet’s The Balcony , a prophetic choice, set in Paris in turmoil, just as London was being torched during the Brixton riots, an explosion of racial tensions that had been simmering for some time. I insisted on casting a Caribbean actress to play the lead, Irma the Madam of the Brothel."
"The ground breaking production of the company, and the point at which the cross-cultural casting began to bite, was Brecht’s anti-war play Mother Courage. Just one comment in a review by critic Malcolm Hay jolted us into the realisation that we were making history: Why is an Indian actor playing the Pastor?"
"The breaking of casting cliches also broke boundaries. A short, Latin-looking actress like me playing classical roles such as Miss Julie , and playing them well, made casting directors uncomfortable. It was unheard of that a short, dark-haired actress of Greek temperament could play the aristocratic Miss Julie. Not beautiful or tall enough etc. It proved one of the best productions of Miss Julie ever seen in London."
"British theatre was xenophobic and tunnel visioned . There was a resistance to using actors from other ethnicities, cultures, and races in production of classics. And a resistance to the non realistic plays like those of Brecht, Genet and Tennessee Williams""
"I'm known as the Greek warrioress...I come from a family of noble Greek women. My grandmother faced the Nazis during occupied Greece with a gun in her hand, and my mother is a veritable Hecuba, all strength and dignity.""
"Morally, good theatre and film for that matter disturbs and unnerves us, tries to rid us of our cliched reactions to the world around us by expanding our sympathies, stretching our imaginations, and enriches us."
"The great British 1950`s theatre critic Ken Tynnan, described the theatre as “an independent force at the country`s life , a sleeping tiger that can and should be roused whenever the national (or international) conscience needs nudging”. And Griselda Gambaro`s EL CAMPO does just that. It is a savage protest against the indignities imposed on modern man and woman by the impersonal bureaucracies and dictatorships in a language of poetic and startling originality. In the figure of Emma, the tortured artist, the part I played, we find expressed an outcry against the imprisonment of artists and the suppression of artistic freedom."
"What is the role of the contemporary woman artist/actress, novelist, scriptwriter etc. etc.? Women in the past have been the creators of the race, in the sense of procreation, a very noble and holy purpose I itself, but men have been the creators of culture, in the sense that we understand actress is over. Once you know what your objectives and values are, there can be no compromise. As founder and artistic director of Internationalist Theatre I was fulfilling both these functions. But, let me add, God help you if you are strong minded and an intellectual in England, where they are generally anti-intellectual and petrified of passionately held beliefs. They have given me such a rough ride you wouldn`t believe it. Tant Pis!!!!I`m not ashamed of spending six years at university, and I revel in intellectual discourse. I`m unashamedly high brow. And, as for fighting in a man`s domain, I`m known as the Greek warrioress, ha, ha ha...I come from a family of noble Greek women. My grandmother faced the Nazis during occupied Greece with a gun in her hand, and my mother is a veritable Hecuba, all strength and dignity."
"follow motto by Cicero: “The life that nature has given us is brief, but the memory of a well spent life eternal.”"
"I called my company "The Internationalist" because there are a lot of actors who are not English and are being prejudiced against, because they come from other countries. I don`t believe in accents or skin colour. My company has a very strong ethic of social justice to it . I try to incorporate actors from as many nationalities as possible.""
"The first performance the company staged was Ford`s '`Tis Pity Shes a Whore'. It was well received. I like to choose the play, the directors, the designers.. it`s a total creative act."
"The thing I like about having a company is the academic side. Then you forget about the academic side once you`ve done the administration and you start creating."
"Our mode of perception goes beyond that - we see all actors as people"
"The first time Return of the Jedi was released I felt it did not have that much impact and the part of Oola seemed quite insignificant to the film although after saying that it was the opposite because her setting the scene up for Princess Leia. But the second time, I still can't believe the popularity the impact it has had on society, plus not just our generation but all the people that have been born since the beginning of Star Wars up until now."
"The only thing that it has helped with when I do acting is that dance brings about a discipline. But the skills are totally different. You use your body to express to convey what you would like to communicate. Acting it is conveying a story through dialogue, the emotions are what is needed to come through."
"The media is the media and my perception for fandom has never been viewed as it being Geekish. They say or use this word Geekish, because they are not knowledgeable regarding fandom they only hear it from others who do not know either. I have met so many incredible people who are the total antithesis of being Geeky. I love all my fans and I view them like myself where their passion is Star Wars."
"My perfect Sunday would be a chilled, calming day, nothing too taxing. I try to watch films at the cinema whenever I can, or I go for a walk down by the river. … Richard and I might then try out a new restaurant we’ve heard about. I’m vegetarian and I love it that there are so many places in London with great veggie food. … I’ve got my own little fan group who call themselves the Sprouts, because of my obsession with Brussels sprouts, and they’re a fantastic group of girls that I chat to all the time. … Otherwise – this is embarrassing to admit – Richard and I will play Call of Duty. It’s a side of me that not a lot of people know about but I was a big games girl when I was a teenager and computer games are my guilty pleasure."
"You know films are a great medium to be stuck with. I wouldn't have missed my movie experiences for anything."
"I think there can be this perception that, people who have some kind of practice, whether it's meditation or spiritual practice or whatever, have got it all figured out, and there's a kind of righteousness about it."
"Progress doesn’t go in a straight line. Representation moves forward, then retreats. It’s a journey. I don’t know what the final destination looks like, or if there even is one. It’s just about pushing forward."
"Those excluding people of colour are robbing themselves – they just don’t realise it."
"Whatever choices you make in life, it’s OK – there’s more life, you know?"
"You can’t get a complete history of anything in two hours – particularly the slave trade."
"Ultimately it’s a case of sink or swim, ‘I’ve always had that “sink-or-swim” thing about my own career too,At difficult moments, it’s like: “Okay, you’re not gonna sink so let’s figure something out.” Take a moment, have a whinge... and then get on with it.’"
"I think that’s something that you have to keep learning and recalibrating and experiencing through life."
"Making a film with a 99% Black female cast is great, but if we are not allowed to explore what our hairstyles will look like or if we're not allowed to imbue the film and our characters in the story with details that are specific to our experience, then it doesn't mean anything."
"You don’t want to be a freedom fighter every time you enter a job."
"You know, always being positive, always wanting to try things, even if at first glance, it isn’t quite clear what the outcome is going to be."
"You can’t say Shakespeare has nothing to offer because he’s a white man."
"Makeup is cool. I mean, you can turn up and feel really good and treat yourself, but it shouldn't be something you hang on to to validate your beauty or something you have to do to make you feel beautiful."
"So many young black women love science, technology, engineering, and maths. But that's not the widely held image of the kind of person who likes those things"
"I think the beauty of a relationship with God is that it's not just about praying and thinking everything's gonna go away. It's a process there to aid and help you."
"Art is subjective so people can either like it or not but you have to be willing to be comfortable with that."
"Grief comes like a thief in the night. And you have to deal with it. You can’t kid yourself that you’re OK"
"You think you have time, and that's the thing I've learned, These things make you realize it's important to reach out to people you love."
"I want to encourage young people. You don't have to be young, you can be any age, but I want to encourage you – anyone going through a hard time… God made you and you're important."
"Just FYI, this kind of behavior won’t be tolerated on my account. You will be blocked without hesitation!!! If you don’t like the casting don’t watch the show. Or do & engage in (expert) opinion different to yours. Either way, I’M GASSED and will continue to be!"
"If you don't like the casting, don't watch the show"
"It was my father’s dream that every child should be well-educated, well-fed and well-housed because he was a great believer that that was the equalizer of mankind. No matter what your background, no matter where you live or come from, if you have the opportunity of education, then you can become anything you want to become. And this was my father’s great dream and focus."
"If a film does well, other people want to work with you."
"Many people have the misconception that a pretty girl can only be a ‘vase’ in a film. I want people to consider me not just to be a film star, but someone who knows about acting."
"I have done all kinds of scripts, but I prefer working on dramas. They give me room to really act. Comedies are fun to work on, but I don’t get much satisfaction from them."
"Comedies are written for men, and the women just stand around. But I do like the audience reaction to comedies. When they laugh, I feel good. You don’t get that sort of pleasure from making dramas."
"I have nothing against commercial films, but if you’re in a movie, [and] you feel the script and everything else about it has no meaning – it’s just another production that the boss can add to his list – I don’t think you should do it."
"My first dream was to be a hairdresser, then a model."
"I’m very honest to my work, to myself and my audience. I never pretend I am something I am not. And when I play a part, I always give it as much as I can. That’s honesty too. I’m proud of being me."
"Well I don't think any two different people can be compared, because for me as you see on my list I've worked with so many different kinds of directors, that I never try to compare two people. I think they are individuals, and because of their upbringing and background they become the way they are and it also affects what they want to say in a movie, I think that's the interesting part, to see the differences in them."
"I mean for me, sometimes I can just picture things that I can't explain, and I think a snake just sort of wriggles along the way."
"No matter where I'm going, I feel like I'm leaving something behind. Every time I get on a plane, I cry. The flight attendants on Cathay Pacific must think I'm mad."
"You experience a lot more pain than normal people—your mom dies, your dad dies, your boyfriend chucks you, you live in the street, and you're really going through these emotions. You're trying to know what it feels like to watch a man die in front of you, as if you've really lived it. Once that division is gone, it gets blurry—you look back at a shoot and think, was I really that sad because in the film my boyfriend didn't like me—or was it something else, something real?"
"We were in Los Angeles. And we could go anywhere. No one had any idea who I was."
"I think I started to have thoughts to really want to be serious about my work when I was about twenty five and I just kind of started to look into that direction and moved into it. But it didn't seem as though it was going anywhere because, you know, films without action or comedy are rare to find in Hong Kong, especially if the main character is a woman. But along the way, I've had a few good breaks."
"Well first of all, in Hong Kong, I think they're still interested in the action films and I think in some ways in action films we still do it better than the Americans. I think that's the first interest that people have still on Hong Kong movies and, you know, the world is smaller now and it's time to open your eyes to other things."
"I have no regrets as an actress, even though I have been one for 15 years and don't think that all the films I've done are that good."
"I like the idea of writing and directing something. That would be my goal in life. But that would not be in the near future. I would have to write and direct at the same time because I don't think anyone could give me a script that I would want to direct."
"To be honest, I really think a lot of Hong Kong actors/actresses aren't interested in European movies."
"I used to be an actress. After being away from film sets for 12 years, I no longer deserve to be called an actress!"
"Yet “Maggie” (as her fans affectionately call her) stands out against western clichés about Chinese actresses. No Orientalist fantasy, she is a modern Hong Kong woman, a complex mirror image of post-colonial dilemmas: displacement, racist misrepresentation and partial loss of cultural identity (she speaks English better than she can read Chinese characters). Unlike such mainland stars as Gong Li and Siqin Gaowa, she has never formally trained as an actress and her acting depends more on emotion than technique."
"At that time, she didn’t have much ambition for her acting career, because of the kind of roles she was offered. I noticed that, if given a lot of dialogue, she would become very nervous; then I cut most of her lines, so she could concentrate on her body language, which is something she was very good at."
"I noticed that black girls never had names in movies. They were just "girl" I remember one instruction read "Enter girl, not very black.""
"[On limited opportunities for African Caribbean actresses in the UK] If you want to know how many black women are being employed, go to the BBC canteen."
"Nothing gets me. Good or bad. Because I never look back. If you look back, you're going to be in trouble, you will suffer from depression, mental illness – no! Always look forward."
"I don't let the bad things eat me up, oh no. Because I'm not a victim. That's why people say to me, "When I see your smile I feel so happy, when I see your body, your aura, I feel as if I can cope." Because I’m Miss Optimist!"
"When you are black you carry your colour with you everywhere you go."
"I am there to move society on and even though I get obstacles I will overcome them because I am working for good."
"I won. And I'm telling women that they can win."
"Your birth is my birth; your death is my death."
"We’re all not warriors from Black Panther, we’re all not the Milaje. We cry, we bleed, we experience everything."
"I think there are different ways to show solidarity. If you feel like you're able to go and do that, by all means do that to speak out."
"Susan Shaw’s story is one of the saddest in British film. She rose from a working-class South London background to become one of the most popular and beautiful British actresses of the 1940s and 50s, but the misery of the last twenty years of her life made her death a merciful release."
"Any government would be really embarrassed to ban Shakespeare."
"The apartheid government was frightened of ridicule. Everyone is frightened of laughter."
"Theatre is a white invention, a European invention, and white people go to it. It's in their DNA. It starts with Shakespeare."
"Life and art get mixed up sometimes – it's what actors draw on."
"My sensitivity to prejudice is high because I was brought up in South Africa. My awareness of all this crap came earlier, and it's stayed with me, and it's why I'm militantly liberal."
"I remember being absolutely shocked in Australia at the absence of black people."
"The only times I saw black people were once in Adelaide and once at the other end of the continent, in both cases looking desperate on the street, sitting in huddles drinking beer. I realised what Australians had done to their indigenous population, to their other: they'd disappeared them."
"In South Africa we were criminal, beastly, vile and disgusting, but we didn't commit genocide."
"You can't envy something you can't be, can you? You sat and admired what was emerging."
"The whole purpose of an actor's life is to find great writing, and when it comes along you leap on it like a puppy on a slipper. You're avid – greedy – hungry – for great gobbets of good writing. That's all we live for."
"I stepped back from acting because I was bringing up a child. You can't do both."
"It's exactly at the moment that they want you most – at the end of the day when it's bathtime, storytime, bedtime – that's when you're walking out the door. I couldn't bear that brave little look as he said, 'Goodbye'. So I thought Josh is more important than a play."
"Nature has a way of dealing with your brain when you have a child – it turns it to porridge."
"You realise retrospectively mother nature has made you absolutely focused and cow-like. Then you realise your child is infinitely cleverer than you will ever be, and wittier and funnier, and you like being in its company and so you think, 'I haven't done a bad job, really."
"Cherophobia is the fear of being too happy and thinking that you'll lose it all. I have cherophobia in both my personal and professional life. I try to not be aware of this fame because I fear I will lose it. I don't live in the moment because I am constantly thinking about what if it all goes away."
"If everybody likes you it means that you are super boring. There has to be somebody who does not like you. I am very happy that there are people who don't like me. I am even happier when I convert the dislikes to likes."
"I want to be a diva and I want to be glamorous and at the top of all fashion portals. But at the same time I also want to be at the top of all film awards. I want to have the balance of both worlds."
"We have a certain societal norm in which we have to be put together, we have to be right, we have to be quiet, we have to be simple, we have to be soft-spoken, we have to be well-dressed. We have to be so many things. Just bringing everything: the vulnerability, the jealousy, the lows, the highs, the real things that we are afraid of even thinking. If you bring that to the forefront on the big screen, then the person watching you from the audience will feel like, 'OK, I'm not the only one.'."
"Doubt is the key to knowledge. Doubt makes you push, doubt makes you work hard, doubt makes you not take the opportunity for granted."
"I don’t like to sort of break down process or talk about process because I feel like art is not like science. It doesn’t have a method to it, you can have a method to your discipline and to the way you approach your work, but at the end of the day imbibing a personality or behaving or talking or feeling doesn’t have a process."
"The feeling that I won't be able to do it is always a good feeling. It puts me in an uncomfortable space. And lots of interesting things can be explored and discovered when you are out of your comfort zone, and when you are terrified."
"You feel grateful for failure at times because that's what gives you a certain vigour. You feel grateful for a heartbreak or disappointment because that's what makes you value the opposite."
"I was at my house having a perfectly normal afternoon sitting in my living room when I felt something watching me. I looked up and saw two men on the terrace of my neighbouring building with a camera right at me! In what world is this ok and allowed? This is a gross invasion of someone's privacy. There's a line you just cannot cross and it's safe to say all lines were crossed today."
"The only thing I can do is build a body of work which hopefully proves I belong in this industry. I always make it a point to acknowledge the easy start I got at the beginning of my career. And sure, it will get you in the room, but then it's up to you to work that room. The audience is actually the best judge of talent. You could come from a background that props you up but the audience will ultimately decide whether or not you belong there."
"I choose films the same way I've been doing it for years. I just keep it flavorful. I want the flavors to be different from each other. It's to satisfy my extremely impatient, monotony-abhorring kind of brain. It's not at all calculated."
"My parents struggled to get to a point where I could enjoy their privilege. I do recognize that. If tomorrow I don’t do well and I stop getting films, I’ll still always acknowledge the fact that I got such great opportunities, so I can never really complain."
"Working in Hollywood on an English language movie for me sort of means starting from scratch, reaching out to an audience that is perhaps not familiar with my work, having worked ten years in the Indian film industry. You can get very comfortable where you are. I'm naturally more drawn towards whatever makes me uncomfortable. It's a way for me to compete with myself."
"I don't think I am the same person. Life has so much more meaning and I think actors can get really self-obsessed if they are constantly thinking about themselves. Now when there is another being in your life suddenly it is like Alia who? It is Raha, Raha, Raha! The focus is on her."
"When I see her work, when I see her act, even in life, what she gives is something that I'm aspiring to for myself."
"She's the first person I felt parental about. She's the first person I felt like I had a parental instinct for. I love her and the country knows she's one of our finest actors. I have a tremendous amount of love, respect and admiration and I'm allowed to say what I want about her."