Actresses From Los Angeles

"When I was 13, I told my parents I didn’t believe in God any more. I wanted to be an atheist because I believed that religion should be about community and having a place to go in prayer, not something that should determine women’s freedoms."

"Night shoots are always the best."

"People don’t need careers. People should just exist."

"I like being able to play make believe as my job. I think I played make-believe growing up a little too long—probably to an inappropriate age. I played make-believe until I was, like, 13 and probably should have been doing something else. But other than that, it’s fun to be able to have to learn about different people. My favorite thing is you have to learn how to work with people that you probably would never try [to]. Some people just aren’t supposed to be in a room together, and you have to be in a room with a group of people who might not all get along and you have to figure out how to come together for one thing. That collaboration is special, and people don’t get to exercise that. I think that’s why people become stubborn, and I think that’s why people become uninspired to change. In this job you have to."

"If you don't like something, talk about something else that's great and maybe someone else will discover it and think it's great too."

"The cool thing about working and meeting a lot of people through your acting is that you never know who you might work with, in the future. It’s really great to be able to say that, potentially sometime soon, I’ll be able to make my own movies. It’s definitely a cool business to be in. I feel very lucky!"

"Whenever I meet someone, talk to someone on the phone, it’s a great feeling, knowing you’ve made their day or that they love the show and they love watching. I mean, it gives them something to do. It’s a great feeling."

"What keeps you confident in a healthy way is knowing that everyone else around you is going to support you and teach you and you're going to learn from them. I just feel open to learning from people."

"Enjoy the little things in life."

"When the fan magazines started wanting to take pictures of me making sandwiches for my husband, I said no. You know there are tribes in Africa who believe that a camera steals a little part of your soul, and in a way I think that's true about living your private life in public. It takes something away from your relationships, it cheapens them."

"…He had always known the situation was messed up, but it took me calling him out. I told him: ‘I’ve been pissed at you. This was terrible and it hurt me and what you did was wrong’…[he did it] because he was afraid, because he was working on a script with these guys. It was bros before hoes."

"People can’t be creative if they feel threatened. You need people saying random weird stuff without feeling their boss will yell at them. And it worked. I think there has been an awakening of compassion, since, a reckoning with privilege."

"…We’re starting to have those conversations and it’s messy, because it’s stuff that we haven’t reckoned with, ever…Like, everyone has always known not to grab an butt, or to not say point blank, ‘You’re a woman – you’re not funny.’ But even just 10 years ago, no one would have talked about a cultural problem in comedy."

"Getting older is great, but I think bravery also comes with having a good career and high status. The world has shown me that bravery and honesty tends to be the better route. And I want to set an example for my daughter."

"When I walk down the street and people say, 'I knew what to do because of watching your show (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit). I knew not to shower. I reported immediately. I took myself to the hospital instead of saying forget it, forget this ever happened, That's what I'm most proud of."

"My mother contracted the AIDS virus when I was very young by the doctors at the hospital. They gave her a precautionary blood transfusion and did not check the blood they gave her. It was a total fluke. I was lied to for 15 years about it. I always thought she died from toxic shock. I was very angry that my father lied to me, but I now understand that he just did not want the stigma of the disease to affect my friendships at school. As we all know, kids can be mean, and my father was trying to protect us. The stigma of this disease has always been something I'd like to help remove. Anyone at any time can contract this disease, gay, straight, a mom of four with no drug history. Anyone. Everyone needs to educate themselves on how to be protected and also about how to discuss this disease without adding to the stigma. It shaped my outlook on life by reminding me that life is so precious and can be very short. Live life to the fullest, but be smart and take care of yourself."

"I started DJ-ing about eight years ago. I used to hang in the DJ booth with DJ AM a lot and he really inspired me. I loved watching how happy he was while making other people so happy as he dropped each track. He really was my inspiration and my motivation. He was the one that told me I could do it. Paris actually hired me to DJ all of her record release parties around the world. This was before it was "cool" to be a chick DJ. We actually had a lot of fun."

"Yes, I was raised by my pops. I think it made me super strong, maybe too strong at times. I remember I was the only kid who didn't cry for their mommy at sleepovers. Which turned into not really needing anyone. Which made it hard to date me. Every guy always cried long before I ever did in a relationship. I'm so lucky I met someone who could handle me. My husband changed me for the better, but he loves me for the tough bitch I am. If he's not happy, even for a moment, I will totally cry."

"Growing up in L.A., for me, was a lot different than you’d think. I was the daughter of a hardworking pizza man who ended up kickin’ it with the rich kids. I lived in Malibu because we opened a D'Amore's pizza there. I'd make just enough money delivering pizzas so I could pay for gas and valet at the hottest clubs. I worked to party. I must have been fired from D'Amore's 100 times. But being the owner’s daughter had perks. And, of course, free pizza for life, so I never starved."

"I grew up in Malibu and people hear that and they’re like, “You were some rich socialite.” I’m like, “How?” My dad is the pizza man, first of all. When I wanted enough money to go to the club or something crazy that night, I delivered pizzas. I had to work. I was in this circle and I grew up with these girls that were more financially fortunate or famous than me and my family. It was a very interesting dynamic, but none of that matters when you’re all true friends. Everybody’s got your back. You become friends with who you become friends with."

"Hence, the whole party girl club rat phase that I went through in my life. School wasn’t for me. Honestly, I felt uncomfortable and I didn’t have a clique. I was floating by friends with all the different groups. Maybe that’s the Gemini in me, but I didn’t have my thing in school. I wasn’t very good at school. I was terrible at math. Testing freaked me out. I dropped out. My last completed grade is ninth grade. We walked in one day and walked out and I was like, “I’m done.” I was in the club one night and DJ AM was deejaying. I literally saw the sky open and I was blown away by how he controlled the room and his energy made everybody else so happy. If you looked at him, he was joyous and it brought joy to me and everyone in the room."

"REAL women don’t bully other women."

"I knew from the time I could walk that I wanted to work. I wanted to be my own boss and do my own thing. You can get what you want if you act like there is no other option."

"Ask your employees questions and ask for their opinions. Empower them to feel ownership. When they love what they do and how they're treated— you'll see results. I like working with people that can teach me something that benefits the business. People willing to do more than just what's required to get the job done."

"I have heard that the business can start to control you. We have to be careful because life is short and we can’t just make it about the business."

"When you’re in LA, you can try everything."

"The most important thing to worry about, in terms of myself, is making sure that I’m mentally and emotionally in the right state of mind, because it’s one thing to look good and feel good, but I think mental illness is something that we don’t discuss enough, and it’s something that everyone deals with to a certain degree."

"I still think acting is something that you’re born with and I think the greatest actors today, they don’t need training, it comes naturally to them. It’s like being a naturally good singer….I don’t think that’s me at all."

"You have to put out the image you want people to have of you, I keep my opinions to myself. I’m neutral—like Switzerland."

"If I want to be out there in front of the cameras, I will be; if I don’t, I’ll stay inside."

"I figure there's two things in a movie: that you are looking at something, you are listening to something. So I like to put a lot of attention into the music and into the recording of the dialogue and into the sets."

"I want to make films that are about visual pleasure for women. Not worry about whether they are in fashion, whether they are politically correct."

"We’re in a time when film is so loud and the audience is looking for shocking. It’s hard to convince people that there is an audience out there that wants quiet stories."

"I didn’t think that I was powerless…But I didn’t think that I was powerful."

"It was a gift to have something else that I was passionate about, because at the end of the day, it comes down to the work and the art."

"I would say that I’ve tried to listen to the voice inside…Luckily, from a very early age, I was able to understand that when things don’t feel quite right, that was probably not the role for me."

"I went vegetarian at about 5 years old when I visited a Dude Ranch with my family and saw a rodeo. It was traumatizing and I made a conscious decision at that age to never eat animals again. When I started middle school, I read a book that exposed a lot of the truth about the food industry and encouraged a healthful lifestyle through a guide to living vegan. It was a mostly simple transition that made me feel so much better about myself, inside and out. … For as long I can remember, acting and animal activism have made me feel alive and purposeful … I would love to see more organizations coming together. Sometimes it’s tricky to understand everyone’s opinions. We all have so many of the same intentions, it’d be awesome to see more support for one another amongst the community."

"How boring would it be if we were all exactly the same? We talked the same, looked the same, had the same taste in everything. Clothing stores would have all the same clothes. Radio stations would play all the same music. I don't know about you, but that is so boring. I think it's great that we're all different. It's the differences that make us interesting. So whether you're gay, straight, or in between, that's cool. Just be you, cuz that's good enough for me."

"I had all but decided to take a break and do some plays, and to see plays and read books and not work – literally not work – until I was going to burn for something."

"So me saying that only 4% of those films are directed by women, there's a misconception for some people in Hollywood that that's the pool of talent. And you see that in the indie space, women represent maybe 28% of films that are made. So it exists in the pipeline — people are making a conscious decision not to hire those women and not to put them up for projects. Also there's still this language that I really hate, with a studio movie, that we "took a risk,"…"

"The film itself is sort of an indictment of Hollywood. With black people, why is everything that we do wrapped in Christian dogma? Why do we only have to be the sassy black friend? It was incredible to be able to talk about the frustration that I’d had in this industry, in a film. And then it did so well. So that became my North Star."

"Because it’s set in the world of boxing, and about men, there’s a real danger of it just existing in a real toxic masculinity space…And while I don’t think it should be the role of the women in the film to soften that entirely – like, men should have the responsibility to deal with their toxicity,” she laughs, “I do think that there’s a nice opportunity for the women in the film to come in and be like, ‘Hey…’ you know?"

"I was so tired of the parts I had to play. Why is it that the screen Chinese is nearly always the villain of the piece, and so cruel a villain--murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass. We are not like that. How should we be, with a civilization that’s so many times older than that of the West. We have our own virtues. We have our rigid code of behavior, of honor. Why do they never show these on the screen? Why should we always scheme, rob, kill?"

"Her role as a sexually available Chinese woman…would eventually earn her resentful criticism in China."

"Lucy Liu is not Anna May Wong. No one is Anna May Wong. The quality of the acting…and first of all, she's five feet seven. Anna May Wong was stunning. She wasn't beautiful - she was stunning. She had great legs - and you never see that! I mean, Chinese women with great legs, because they're usually short. Here's a tall, statuesque woman of empowerment, who knew who she was, and this confidence was shown right away in all the films she did."

"She was in Hollywood in that era when non-white actors could not kiss. This meant there was a whole range of parts that were not available to her. She couldn’t play a romantic lead where she would have to kiss her leading man. So, she had to watch parts that she could have played—should have played—go to other actors. And that frustrated her, to say the least."

"I am convinced that I could never play in the Chinese theater. I have no feeling for it. It’s a pretty sad situation to be rejected by the Chinese because I’m too American."

"I think for both of us, though, it was really refreshing because given that I didn’t know a lot about him, everything that I have learned about him, I learned through him as opposed to having grown up around different news stories or tabloids, whatever else. Anything I learned about him and his family was what he would share with me, and vice versa. So for both of us it was a very authentic and organic way to get to know each other."

"There is a misconception that because I have worked in the entertainment industry that this would be something I would be familiar with. But even though I had been on my show for I guess six years at that point, and working before that, I have never been part of tabloid culture. I have never been in pop culture to that degree and lived relatively quiet life, even though I focus so much on my job. So that was a really stark difference out of the gate. And I think we were just hit so hard at the beginning with a lot of mistruths that I made the choice to not read anything, positive or negative, it just didn’t make sense. So instead we focused all of our energies on nurturing our relationship."

"It’s so interesting because we talk about it now and even then, you know, because I’m from the States, you don’t grow up with the same understanding of the royal family. While I now understand very clearly there is a global interest there, I didn’t know much about him and so the only thing that I had asked her when she said she wanted to set us up was — I had one question. I said, ‘Well, is he nice?’ Because if he wasn’t kind, then it didn’t seem like it would make sense. So we went and met for a drink then, I think, very quickly into that we said, ‘What are we doing tomorrow? We should meet again.’"