Actresses From Ukraine

"I think there will always be a double standard between males and females, so I think that an actress is more likely to protect her public persona, so to speak, than an actor would be."

"Comedy is very hard and I don't know if it's where my heart necessarily is but doing comedy is one of those things where if something is funny right now does not necessarily mean it's going to sustain itself for a year in production and be funny when the movie comes out and that to me is the hardest thing. I love playing different characters and I love doing fun things and I love to entertain people, whether that be in a comedy or a drama. If I get you to laugh or I get you to cry I'm super stoked, as morbid as that might sound."

"The desire to be perfect. Women innately have this weird thing where they try to have a perfect persona—to look perfect, be perfect, act perfect, have their kids look a certain way. Women put so much pressure on themselves."

"I don’t wear makeup. I don’t wash my hair every day. It’s not something that I associate with myself. I commend women who wake up 30, 40 minutes early to put on eyeliner. I think it’s ­beautiful. I’m just not that person. So to go to a shoot and have my makeup artist put on face cream and send me off to do a photo, I was like, “Well, this makes life easy.”"

"Sadly, in any industry and in any work-related environment, females always strive to achieve a certain amount of perfection, whether that be skinny or pretty. It's a constant, in our society."

"You want to be honest with a character and play it truthfully, and you want to be genuine with your character."

"That is the biggest form of bullying ever, the paparazzi. Printing lies, making accusations, it's just bullying."

"I feel like every role you take, there's a part of you that obviously feels like you can do it. I don't know if perfect is the right word because I don't believe in perfection. I don't think it exists."

"People have interpretations of what you're supposed to be like. If you're unattractive and overweight, you must have a great personality. If you're attractive, then you must not be the nicest person. People are always taken aback that I'm easygoing but not necessarily stupid."

"It's all perspective. Your version of normal and my version of normal is different. My kids' version of normal is incredibly different. So it's perspective. You try to surround them with diversity. We try to surround ourselves with all aspects of life and try not to stay in our bubble, but it's hard. It is really hard! And anyone who tells you otherwise is lying."

"I very much have always felt like an American… People were like, ‘Oh, you’re so Eastern European.’ I was like, ‘I’m so L.A.!"

"I turned to my kids and I was like, ‘You are half-Ukrainian, half-American!’ I literally was like, ‘Look, you!’ And my kids were like, ‘Yeah mom, I get it.’ And I was like, ‘No! You are Ukrainian and American.’ I was like, ‘You are half-Iowa, half-Ukraine.’ And they’re like, ‘Okay, I get it. It’s been irrelevant to me that I come from Ukraine. It never mattered. So much so that I’ve always said I’m Russian, right? Like I’ve always been, ‘I’m from Russia’ for a multitude of reasons…"

"I don’t think that we need to consider the people of Russia an enemy. I do really want to emphasize that. I don’t think that that’s being said enough in the press. I think that there’s now ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us’ mentality. And I don’t want people to conflate the two problems that are happening. I don’t think it’s the people of Russia… I do encourage people to look at it from the perspective of, ‘It’s the people in power, not the people themselves’."

"And I also don’t want people to get discouraged and conflate different issues in the world, and I don’t want people to compare. I think that one thing that’s happening a little bit that I’ve noticed is people are like, ‘Why is everybody paying attention to this problem, but nobody paid attention to all these other issues that have been happening?’ And I don’t want people to conflate. Like everyone, people just to focus on what is at hand right now and right now this issue can get incredibly catastrophic for the rest of the world – not just for that part of the world, and I don’t want people to lose sight of that."

"I think anyone who at 26 is going to attempt to be a professional ballerina is going to physically kill themselves. Baths are what I looked forward to, every single night! And a glass of wine!"

"From every film you learn something new, but from my experience you never know what film is going to open what doors, and it always happens when you least expect it."

"I wanted to quit the industry when I was eighteen and finish '70's', finish my contract on the show and go to college because I was pretty convinced that after '70's and after being on a show for eight years that I would be very much pigeonholed for something specific that I didn't want to be a part of anymore. So my attempt at college failed miserably and I dropped out and decided that this is what I wanted to do for a living. When I made that decision I had to convince myself to disassociate myself from the industry, if that makes any sense, to be who I am and to have this just be what I do and that the paths could never cross. If they did then I think that given after '70's it was like a good year of just pure rejection. So if I didn't disassociate myself from what I did I would probably go through depression, I would assume, or go through some hard times. But I didn't and I always had some other things that were more important to me. I had family that was more important. I had my life that was more important. I had hobbies that were more important and this was just my job."

"I didn't fail out. I dropped out. I did not fail. I was actually a pretty good student. My problem was that I didn't know what I wanted to study. What was I going to go in? Undecided? I took a class on Zionist theory. I took classes that interested me, that weren't necessarily for a specific degree. Then I realized and spoke to my parents and I said, 'I do love what I do and I want to pursue it.' They were like, 'Oh, why don't you just drop out.'"

"I would say that by third grade I spoke pretty fluent English. I don't remember much of second grade. I've said this before. I was not a traumatized kid, by any means with the way that this might come out, but I pretty much blocked out all of second grade in the states. I'm guessing it was because it was hard and my parents said that I came home crying every night but I don't remember it. I think it was rough because I just didn't know where I was and I didn't get the culture. I didn't get the people. I'll be honest, I never...I met an African American person for the first time in my life when I was seven. I didn't know they existed. I didn't know there were people of a different color. I didn't know people with red hair existed. It wasn't even...it wasn't because I wasn't taught that in school but I think it just wasn't where I grew up. So much of it was, forget the language barrier, just a culture shock. I think adapting to the culture was much harder than actually learning English."

"Music for me is something I prefer to keep away form the whole business part of my life. I feel like everything I do, in a way, has some sort of business around it. So with my music I can have my privacy. If people don’t have to pay for it then I think they can be a little more open to new ideas."

"I remember, when we were still living in the Soviet Union, Mum would rush by like the wind in our apartment, covered with fur, or even running from one movie scene to the next, because she was a movie star there. Even if it was 40ºF outside, she always wore a miniskirt. For me, she was the most beautiful of all women."

"I was still a kid when I gave up modeling and moved to London to devote myself to music. At the time, I had a band. Two years later, broke, I was forced to return to New York to go back to modeling and earn my living. But, when I’d call my agent, she replied to me: "You are now an old-fashioned model, you have a 'has-been' look." In fact, I could not even manage to get castings. Can you imagine what it’s like when you’re told that you’re over at the age of 18?"

"Action films are definitely a lot of training and I do a lot of my own stunts, so I definitely am in there for the long haul for the training process. But I love it. Martial arts is something I’ve always loved doing. It’s the only form of exercise that I can deal with. Everything else is really boring and mind-numbing. So for me it’s just really fun. I love to sort of feel like a superhero in that sense, to be able to fly through the air and to be on wires. It just makes me feel like I’m in Magic Mountain or something. I love it."

"I had a really great time doing it. I haven’t seen the whole movie together with all the special effects, but even without the special effects I was like, "This is rad!" I loved it. I just was with the characters more. I don’t know, somehow I connected with the story better."

"I love infomercials. I’ve always thought that I could do a really good infomercial because I have a lot of great ideas with things. I just never actually have the time to patent them, like everybody else with great ideas. One person takes the time to do it and the rest of us to keep talking about it."

"I don’t at all want to resemble some of these young designers who ask hallucinating prices for rags that are so in fashion now, that six months later, they are old-fashioned! I love vintage boutiques, I love to customize my clothes. And then, with my friends, we regularly exchange togs."

"My private life has been the subject of much jabbering. Perhaps this slightly scandalous side of me people find entertaining! Before, being a model, it was just a job, and I was making fun of it. But today, I take my career more seriously. The fact that a reader may buy an Armani item because she’d seen it on me in a magazine is very important to me. So much so that I intend to launch my own label."