Actresses From New Jersey

"I think the worst thing that can happen to a good actor is fame. The limelight is a tricky place, because you can't believe what's going on around you. You stop observing. You stop perceiving. You stop extending yourself, and you become isolated. Our duty as actors is to remain compassionate and curious. Fame complicates all that."

"There are some times when I think acting can be a noble profession."

"I found I was really comfortable taking on a different personality. It saved me from myself, in a way."

"No! The other thing, that God brought us together for a reason."

"I have a two-year-old who just turned three, and my four-year-old just turned five. I have the same irrational feelings taking them to pre-school. It's this charged combination of stress and joy and anxiety and excitement. When they're away, you've got a sudden loss of purpose and this ever-present fear about the kid's welfare. The departure of our children from our nest is not an easy thing."

"Well, aren't we all grateful to be alive? I just know lots of people … at my age, I've lost a lot of people in my life and I'm very grateful to be here. That's what I mean."

"I live simply. I don't buy a lot of fashion!"

"I don't know what my image is. I went to France to publicize Marvin's Room, and one really smart young woman journalist said to me "You know, what I told people I was going to interview Meryl Streep, they were so excited...all ze woman in my office, they love you so much. But ze men - they are afraid of you.""

"And at this stage in her seemingly charmed life, when she's moved to Los Angeles and has three children in three different private schools and is redoing a house on the Westside and worrying about fabric samples, she's careered off the beaten path of high drama, if temporarily, to cultivate her comedic connections."

"Meryl Streep’s image is composed of two distinct image clusters centered on her renown as a great actress and her reputation as a devoted wife and mother. A more muted aspect of her star persona – one that is often masked as merely an offshoot of her maternal devotion –is her social activism."

"Her roots go back to England: We traced her back to her eighth grand-grandfather born in England in 1620. In 1645, he shows up in Providence, Rhode Island, as one of the founding fathers of Rhode Island."

"Even [being] in a rehearsal period, with Meryl Streep watching, is a behind-tightening experience."

"Meryl Streep could obviously have made it to the screen on looks alone. The camera embraces her. Lucky camera. Many women would kill for her slender, fashion-model figure, for that ash-blond hair, oval face, porcelain skin and those high, exquisite cheekbones. Her eyes mirror intelligence; their pale blue sparkle demands a new adjective: 'merulean]. Only a slight bump down the plane of her long, patrician nose redeems her profile from perfection."

"Streep, who was born in New Jersey, is known to have historic family ties to Pennsylvania and Rhode Island."

"One of my only role models as a young woman was Meryl Streep and, specifically, her character in Out of Africa. I would watch the movie whenever I needed inspiration because Ms. Streep so brilliantly portrayed an incredibly courageous woman who stands alone to save her plantation. Her performance and the strength of her character were tangible examples of how I wanted to be in the world, and I soaked it in and learned from her experience."

"I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience."

"[On the situation for women in Afghanistan] Today in Kabul a female cat has more freedom than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face, she may chase a squirrel in the park. [...] A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today because the public parks have been closed to women and girls by the Taliban. A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not in public. This is extraordinary. This is a suppression of the natural law. The way that this culture, this society has been upended, is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world."

"I'm so sorry to hear this, but this is what it is. It makes it feels like it's sort of my fault on some level, but it also connect be to those events, those first encounters between the two cultures must have been raw, terrifying, brutal and final. conflicts in early American history, known as King Philip’s War, or Metacom’s War, Lawrence Wilkinson defended his town in the face of fierce violence from the Native Americans."

"I am nothing but these people, and as an actor I'm always trying to call up lives and the reason I know these things as an actor is because I have the DNA of all these crazy people."

"Half of me is Streep and the other half is Wilkinson from Lincolnshire so I come by it honestly, this part."

"No! But they were here [in Los Angeles]. Here they were surprised, because it was difficult to finance, the film. A lot of the executives would say, 'I just don't get it.'"

"I don't really. In our business, you're not kicked out necessarily …"

"I am so daunted by [reputation] that I never think about it. It is a thing bigger than I am capable of perceiving. Other people are more aware and concerned with it than I could ever allow myself to be."

"Hollywood to me is what it is to you. It's something other than what I am. I sit outside it."

"Negative reviews seem to slide off Pia's back like discarded mink coats."

"Obviously, if I was serious about having a relationship with someone long-term, the last people I would introduce him to would be my family."

"At some point during almost every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her. That event predictably leads to the magical moment of their first kiss. Please. I fall ALL the time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer."

"My relationship with my father had been on the proverbial fritz since the time I was fifteen and called the police to report him for child molesting. He had never molested me, but I wanted to have a party that weekend and needed him out of the house."

"I had to feign interest in all this nonsense until I could ask when I could come over and sit on his face. I didn't say that out loud, of course. I never say the things I really want to. If I did, I'd have no friends."

"Are you there vodka? It's me, Chelsea. Please get me out of jail and I promise I will never drink again. Drink and drive. I will never drink and drive again. I may even start my own group fashioned after MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but I'll call it AWLTDASH, Alcoholics Who Like to Drink and Stay Home."

"Most men would never tell a girl her Pikachu smells like a crab cake. It's just not done. But they would have no qualms about telling their guy friends. Similarly, if you're a guy and you pull your pants down, and the girl you're with immediately starts text messaging her friends, you have a small penis."

"He laid into me with the same gusto as a right-wing political pundit on the O'Reilly Factor defending President's Bush right to vacation six days out of the week."

"The part that wasn't a jackpot was his baseball mound of red pubic hair that looked like it had literally been attached with a glue gun. I couldn't believe how much there was, and wondered how he had never heard of scissors, or--more appropriate for that kind of growth--hedge trimmers. I didn't understand what porn he was watching to not be aware of the trimming that was happening all across the world among his compatriots. I'm not a finicky person when it comes to pubic hair maintenance and I certainly don't expect men to shave it all off, leaving themselves to look like a hairless cat. That's even creepier then than seeing what Austin had, which could really only be compared to one thing: A clown in a leg lock."

"It became clear when I got in my car that Persians are only really good for two things. Oil and hummus."

"I want people to know that I’m a real person, and that I’ve been through normal situations, like crushes and heartbreaks."

"I'm actually recording my second album now.... so I've just been recording and co-writing. The single should be coming out soon, but I feel it's pretty much 80 percent done. And, yeah, I'm excited about it. It's a lot more rock and edgier.."

"...often see the glamorous side of this career. ...It's really saying it's not like that and I'm just the girl next door. There's always somebody who either loves you or hates you, and you just have to have a thick skin."

"When I was little, I saw the play Les Misérables on Broadway, I thought it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. So I went to my manager and told him I wanted to be in it. He asked me if I could sing, and I said no. I took one lesson and landed the role of Cosette in a national tour of the musical"

""Ilsa" has been such a minor part of my career, that I find it amusing that some persons only know me for that association."

"Thank you for your loyalty, and many kindnesses through the years...You have one by one validated my modest life as an actress, far beyond my personal fulfillment. Dare to pursue your own positive dreams. I value each of you."

"A wonderfully funny letter was sent to me signed by a fraternity in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., medical school; the fraternity for doctors had voted me the body on which they would most like to operate."

"If everyone is a product of this society, who will say the things that need to be said, and do the things that need to be done, without compromise? Truth will never start out popular in a world more concerned with marketability than righteousness. It will initially suffer ridicule and even violence — yet ultimately it is undeniable. All of humanity is living in a dream world, but suffering real consequences."

"From the moment I first heard Lauryn Hill's song about becoming a mother, I knew that I would name my child Zion. "Now the joy of my world is in Zion / Now the joy of my world is in Zion," she sang. I wept out loud the first time I heard the song. It touched me to my soul."

"It's emotional warfare telling the people we love, the most, the truth about ourselves."

"How you gonna win when you ain't right within?"

"There are a lot of people who helped make Queen Latifah who she is today. I don't forget, but a lot of people do and get big heads. My mom will make me walk the dogs or take out the trash when I go home. I'm not allowed to get a big head, I've still got to do the simple things in life."

"There are different flavours of sexiness."

"You have to celebrate the gifts because life is so hard and I think once you realize life's gonna be hard, the good stuff really comes forward."

"I know that you’ve heard this before ad nauseam, but twenty years do go by at lightning speed, and that is my first pearl of wisdom. And, now, the others in this pocket pack of precepts to live by... Take care of yourself and be caring with others. Nurture a sense of gratitude, and be grateful for a sense of humor. Be sure to thank your parents and mentors for all they’ve given you, but give love to your future children and mentees freely without any expectation of thanks in return. Look for ways to let your light shine, but don’t be afraid occasionally to be in the dark. Strive to make your behavior above reproach, but be careful not to cast judgment on others whose behavior may reflect a different form of reality. The more you give, the richer you will become. Let your life be enhanced by the company you keep."

"A Buddhist saying, which I think captures perfectly the idea that life is a series of opportunities arising out of unforeseen circumstances: Unceasing change turns the wheel of life, and so reality is shown in all its many forms. Now for those of you who have stayed up all night in advance of today’s activities, it may take a while for the deep wisdom of that idea to fully resonate, but once it creeps into your consciousness, and, as you continue your life’s journey from this day forth, I think the remarkable truth of this statement will surprise and amaze you and possibly even serve as a source of comfort at some point."