models-from-england

"I don't really know how to act, I kind of wanted to somehow make it real, and one of the ways I've always thought makes that a little bit easier is if you shake up your physical state just before action. You end up walking into a scene having a different feeling."

"If I do decide one day to stop acting, I just hate the idea of people going: 'Oh, did you ever do anything else besides that Twilight thing?'"

"I never really had any aspirations to be an actor when I was young. I wanted to play the piano in a bar, to be the old dude with a whisky glass, all dishevelled."

"Friendship exists only when there is truth and loyalty."

"Annabelle was always slightly a tortured soul, Actually, if I really think back to it, the show was not the right platform for someone like Annabelle, Although you want people who have explosive personalities who maybe cope with life differently, you also don't really want to have people who can't cope with life. She didn't have a coping mechanism when we would all have to talk behind her back, she didn't understand it because she was always the cool girl at school. So something like this was very negative for her and such a very, very negative experience. She couldn't say in her head, 'It's a TV show, It's a TV show.' It's incredibly hard. Somebody like me who went to boarding school and can block stuff out, not deal with my emotions — she could not do that. This was just not a great platform for her."

"When I walk in a room, I think people think, Oh, shit. It's Annabelle."

"He was my brother, my boyfriend, my soulmate. Most of the time people called me Mrs McQueen. Quite often we were sharing a bed. The truth is I was happier with Lee than with anyone else. He asked me to marry him towards the end and I said no. I wish now that I had said yes."

"It was a good 10 hours in the makeup chair, and then I’d go and do a 12-hour day on set, and the makeup artist, Sarah Rubano, who was incredible, would constantly be touching me up and making sure my contacts were all right and all those sorts of things."

"Acting is the only thing I do, the only thing I know. It’s a marathon for me. There is a lot of thought that goes into the choices I make as an actor and the films I decide to do. It’s important to fill up your life with varied experiences, then return to set, a sacred place to release and reveal. Each time I’m cast, it feels like a miracle, and I prepare as if it might be my last role—an energy that makes me work harder and be more present on set."

"I would wake up very early, put my phone on a timer for maybe an hour at a time, and write in the style of a stream of consciousness, rather than script form, because I found that to be an obstacle in me getting my ideas down. I would write as Pearl, as me … but Pearl is me. I mean, all my characters are me, turned up or turned down. It’s all me exploring different facets of myself."

"You have to be fierce as an actor. It’s not the actor’s job to be interesting; that’s the script’s job. It’s our job to be truthful and brave."

"Mia is a unicorn of an actress. It’s not like you could ever say, ‘We need a Mia Goth type,’ because there is no type. There’s just Mia."

"I see Elizabeth as a butterfly or a moth. She’s fluttering and trying to find her place in this world."

"In the beginning of my career, I was just happy to be in a movie. ‘I'll just do whatever you give me. I'll be there.’ As time has progressed, I view myself as more valuable, with more to give than just being in a movie. Working with Ti [West] and being involved from the start has shown me I can have agency over the creative process. A meaningful voice can go beyond acting—screenwriting, producing, having input—and that has become clearer. It's about more than being happy to be here; it's about making great cinema."

"To know [that] the lead of a movie is willing to basically do whatever to make the movie is a good feeling. That inspires the confidence to push things. Movies like Pearl and MaXXXine can be just that little bit wilder than they would have been otherwise. And that’s fun."

"I saw acting as a way to get out of the situation I was in. That’s really what made me work as hard as I did. It was my driving force. ‘If this doesn’t work, then I’m going to go back to that, and I can’t let that be. So this needs to work. There’s no plan B. I have to do whatever it takes to make this scene good, to make sure that I’m good enough as an actor."

"The truth is, I hate acting. Acting is actually the hardest thing to do. It's this elusive thing and you think you have it—it’s like trying to grip smoke. I love it so much."

"Like everybody else, I was blown away. That’s when I said, 'However she makes the sauce, I would love to cook with her. What she was doing in Pearl was incredibly hard to do. I thought, My God, she just did a quadruple somersault over a fire pit."

"So often in films there are two ways a female can be portrayed: either innocent and virginal or the complete opposite. You never have the middle ground, and I was really keen to portray a realistic, honest approach of who I think a young woman would be in this situation – strong and independent."

"As the generalization goes about the art industry, people can be really challenging and thought-provoking in their thinking and questioning the status quo, and it’s really important that the status quo can be questioned and that there are people doing that."

"In terms of actions, diet is a main thing for me, it's something I can control. I eat mostly vegan, probably like 95 per cent plus. … I've tried to consume less and support more sustainable businesses. … The biggest thing is probably a mindset shift, pushing against the narrative that we need to buy more, do more, and moving out of a mindset of waste."

"We’re migrating from our selfies to what we stand for, she says. I’m very, very grateful that we’re moving toward art, creativity, and community, and that’s where I think the solution lies for all of our younger generations"

"I remember being a youngster, running around and not having a phone and not having any kind of labeling in my mind and just free-playing … It felt timeless."

"I’m telling you, I’m guaranteeing you, you are not alone. If you have a trusted contact, you [can] feel an instant where you’re not being judged. That is the doorway to your own liberation – and that is the doorway to freedom, freedom from your mind."

"With these reels that are 3 seconds, everything is timed and everything has an expiration, and I think that’s where social anxiety comes in."

"Sometimes I’m so overwhelmed by what’s demanded of me as an actor, The selfie phenomenon has taken us down a route where our identity and our values are lost."

"I’ve always believed that you have to share and pass it on. That’s who I am as a person. But I don’t like my kindness to be mistaken for weakness. I do it as initiatives and I do it around the world.…I love working with new young photographers, young designers and a new generation of models."

"If Kim Kardashian, Beyoncé and Hailey Bieber can rock a G-string bikini with unparalleled confidence, then why the hell can't the rest of us? Our bums are as worthy of soaking up the sun as any other part of the body. Get those peaches out!"

"I think the fantasy and sci-fi genre is really interesting. It’s super fun and it’s escapism, but it’s also a very creative way to examine the human psyche. Sitting in the cinema and feeling fear is a safe way to feel things and go about your day. That’s why I became an actress. I enjoy telling stories and taking people on a journey, emotional and mental."

"With each child, you are pushed to your edges in a wonderful and extreme way. It requires all of who you are and every reserve you have but, from somewhere within, you find what they need. It’s a constant search. So, being a mother is a journey of self-discovery and learning who you are, your limits and how much love you have to give."

"Seeking out help is never a weakness. Whether that's just phoning a friend or finding a therapist or starting to read up on things on the internet or in books. Sometimes we think that means we can't help ourselves, that it's a bad thing, but it's not. It's just becoming more self-aware, and I think that that's a really amazing gift to give yourself."

"I used to go to work with a smile on my face because they were wonderful actors, also beautiful human beings and I had such a brilliant time."

"Comedy is quite different to anything else – the most important thing is getting a laugh, and it’s a technical skill. You can easily kill a laugh by coming in too soon or with a different expression, so in a way it’s much harder work than drama, because with drama you just get into the script and that’s it! And the more you’re into the script, the more convincing you’ll be."

"In film and media I want to see short men with tall women."

"I would be spooning my 6'8" boyfriend. I'm the big spoon, obviously. He'll love that I said that."

"I did something particularly heinous that allowed me to wake up. I had to lose something. Sometimes you have to lose something that is worth more to you than your drinking."

"[quoting Charles Bronson] "Tom, what I'm trying to say is, right? What I'm trying to say is, son... Is sometimes, yeah, you've gotta cut a little piece of yourself off, yeah? No matter how much it hurts, in order to grow, yeah? In order to move on. D'you know what I mean? What are you having for your tea?""

"The music industry as a whole just needs more women. There are a lot of men at the top of the ranks."

"Feminism to me is not man-hating, it’s just being like "we deserve the same opportunities". “You hear so much about all these strong important men who have changed the world, even in history and the story of mankind, somehow the fucking story starts with: ‘Well, the man did this.’"

"Everything that I do is very autobiographical. I’m trying to be as much of an open book as possible and give the audience every single piece of me."

"When the night's here, I don't do tears Baby, no chance I could dance, I could dance, I could dance Watch me dance, dance the night away My heart could be burnin', but you won't see it on my face Watch me dance, dance the night away I'll still keep the party runnin', not one hair out of place."

"...people shouldn’t have to make statements and their lives should be private if they want to be. But I think if someone’s feeling restricted by not making a statement, then they should be free to do so. I chose to speak to you because I don’t want to lie by omission and I want to be very straightforward about my life..."

"…Teenagers today are so fluid and non-binary; they’re fantastically unafraid. My house [growing up] was a bit like that. I’ve loved men and I’ve loved women and I was raised to feel like I could love who I wanted. We could talk about everything in the world."

"If you’re told that’s how you behave in order to survive and flourish, then you actually question far less in your 20s and 30s because you think: ‘Oh, nothing’s as bad as that.’ So it’s a real issue. No one wants their teenage daughter thinking that’s what you should expect from your life."

"There are two separate answers…For people in general, I think they should name themselves in whatever way they wish. The flourishing of the gay movement in America is clearly very necessary and the identity that people could proudly lay claim to is crucial. Lives are lost every day because of bigotry in this country. So I think that should not prevail."

"As a seven-year-old, I remember people were appalling – they would just comment on his physicality…We’d walk down the street together and people would shout out insults. I remember feeling incredibly angry."

"My understanding is that it derived from an age-old habit: in Nigeria – and elsewhere in Africa – it was common for parents to send their children from the village to a town, to an extended family member or even a stranger, because it was thought that child would have more opportunities. The problems began with people like my parents because it was a foreign country. I think it was seen as a status thing – and there was an element of ‘white being seen as right’. Mostly they wanted us to get an education and learn to speak good English."

"I wanted to assimilate and go back to the abnormal normality I knew. I wanted to wash off the experience of Africa but obviously I couldn't because that's who I was. As much as I wanted to deny it, it was plaguing me, and I was reminded by the images coming through the TV, people on the streets and in the end my family in the house."

"There was no way of getting love. If all you have experienced is humiliation and rejection, and your foster father forces you to fight back or get a beating from him, you look for any kind of lifeline. There were only two options: fight, or become a victim. I tried the victim option for a long time."

"It felt like a kidnap…and it rendered me mute for about nine months. I couldn't speak the language, and if I spoke English I was abused for it. It was quite a culture shock: brutal. I was so traumatised and afraid that I stopped speaking and my [birth] parents thought there was something wrong with me, thought I was possessed…"