Top 147 Quotes & Sayings by Annette Bening - Page 2

I find the reality of our emotional lives interesting.

There's so much of our psychological makeup which is impermissible for us to explore because it's inappropriate or perverse or scary. I'm interested in exploring that in myself. I try to be honest with myself about everything that I feel. I'm not saying I'm able to do that all the time, but it's something I'm interested in.

My husband and I have very similar backgrounds even though we're years apart. So there are a lot of things that we basically share.

We all get lost along the way, but hopefully we figure out some sort of path. It helps if you can imagine the process as well as the goal. Those kinds of dreams are easier to achieve.

It's kind of a mystery to me, as far as my own life experiences and what I've witnessed - why some people can just move on through traumatic experiences, in childhood particularly, and why other people are just paralyzed by it. I just don't know how and why that is.

I feel very, very lucky to have come from the family I did. We have our dysfunctions and our problems, just like any family. But my parents are extremely loving people.

It's easier to see in someone else, another actor, how they kind of disappear and then this other persona appears. A great actor is a thing of mystery.

What really motivates you to try to work things out as an actor is in large part fear, because you want to get into that narrative and bring the audience along.

To me, I didn't think of acting as being a young thing only.

When I look at women, older than I am, in their 50s, 60, 70s, 80s, and I see women that I admire, I think, 'Oh, I get it; that's how I'm going to be.' I'm not scared. I want to be that.

Having a life outside of movies is like pure oxygen. It makes the work more precious and informed.

Even with a stable character, you want something surprising to happen, hopefully because that's what the camera loves the most. That's what is great about film.

I never speak for my husband, and I never speak for my children. It's a rule. Believe me, it is.

Most women would say they relate to 'Hedda Gabler' - there's a part of her in them. Ibsen was writing about a deep ambivalence that many women feel about domesticity. I think about myself and friends of mine - we have some of Hedda's qualities and traits.

I'm interested in writing that explores all sides of human beings.

I think in the past, around the time that method acting became so prevalent, it used to be that American actors were thought to be the kind that would work more from the inside out, and that the English actors worked more from the outside in.

A lot of directors in my experience are very receptive. They see what you do first, and then they want to find a place to put the camera, and they tweak you here and there.

I never felt like I had made it.

My mother is not somebody who's troubled by aging.

I like that I've been through things, that when something happens, it resonates with something that already happened. It's not that things like loss are more or less painful. But they're deeper. I find that fascinating.

I read 'Game Change.' If you want to relive the campaign, that book is unbelievable. It's great. It's the book of that campaign. It brought all the memories back of everything with Clinton and Obama, and Sarah Palin and McCain, and choosing her, and John Edwards. It was an interesting book.

I've played parts that were just likable people, and there's a certain pleasure in that. And that's that.

I think for all of us, as we age, there are always a few moments when you are shocked.

My character in 'Running With Scissors' is manic-depressive. She starts out as a wonderfully eccentric person, and then descends into a terrible illness.

It's always 'busy' with four children; it's chaos.

I'm certainly not a perfect mother, but I am an avid mother, let me put it that way.

I've made some movies that I really loved that nobody saw.

I wanted to be a classical actress. I plodded along. I went to junior college in San Francisco, I was in a Repertory Company. My hero was Eva Le Gallienne, who was a great theater actress at the turn of the century who created her own company, and she wrote these hilarious autobiographies at the time.

Our children see us a certain way, and we want to be seen by them in a certain way. I certainly want to be a strong, stable, loving, consistent presence in my children's lives. But we are human beings, too.

I'm lucky: almost all my family has lived to be very old. I have one grandfather who lived to be 100.

I love the luxury of the camera. The camera does so much for you. I like the secrets a camera can tell.

I think when you're at your best as an actor, it is cathartic.

When I watch my kids, and I see the primal level at which the sibling relationships are formed, then I completely understand what these unresolved adult sibling problems are based on. You know, 'Mom liked you better' and, 'You got your own room and I didn't.'

I'm still very critical of myself in film.

I think what's interesting about the whole paparazzi thing is that unless you're Brad Pitt or Madonna, you can pretty much avoid it. You know when you're going to an opening that you will be photographed, so that's fine. And you know the restaurants that have paparazzi, so you don't go to them.

Somebody said something really smart: It's like you end up being the defense attorney for your role. Your job is to defend their point of view. You're fighting for what they want. You learn that in acting school - it's Acting 1A: 'What do you want? What's in the way?'

I've always been pretty levelheaded. In show business, you need to have a certain internal stability.

I've tried to take roles with great demands.

I still remember the five points of salesmanship: attention, interest, conviction, desire and close.

If you're an actor, you have to find a way to make peace with all the media attention.

The time I spend with my kids informs every fiber of who I am.

There are so many different kinds of relationships, so it's sort of difficult to define what is considered normal.

I always wonder about people's history and their lives, especially people that are a little bit more distant, who obviously have had some kind of a thing, and you know there's some reason why they're not able to connect. It's not because they don't want to. They don't have the ability.

We all have our insecurity and that's normal. And you have to learn to accept that about being an artistic person or aspiring to be an artistic person is that fears and insecurity, they don't go away.

This is a good thing to say to film students. If there's a story point that you don't feel right about, that there's a question you have - "Does it really make sense?" Or, "Is that plausible? Is it implausible? Is it set up?" Or whatever. Go at it. Don't let it go. If there's a question in your mind, you're probably right. You probably do need to work on it and think about it more.

Sometimes people don't rehearse at all, but you might have had a chance to rehearse for a few days, or even more than that. Then in the moment when the camera's running is the only time it matters. So whatever you've discussed or thought about or discussed with the director, the other actors, hopefully there's a part of the experience that you've left open so that only in that moment the camera catches it. That's of course the hardest thing to do because everything is planned and you have thought about it in advance.

If you push in every time there's a big moment, then the tenth time you push in, you're not going to get the same effect. Or if you have too many close ups, then when you have a big moment and you want a close-up in order to make a point, it doesn't mean anything because you've already been doing close-ups. It's like writing in all capitals. Then after a while that doesn't mean anything. So, just because you can do something with a camera doesn't mean you should.

Right now, I love the fact that I have so many opportunities, but I know this privileged position cannot last. That doesn't mean that I'll stop working. I picture myself as an old actress doing cameos in films with people saying: "Isn't that that Bening woman?"

You end up loving every character that you play but a lot of the people I've played, I should just say for myself, I played, I wouldn't necessarily want to continue playing them. I've done them. It's like going on a trip. You go, you're amazed, you're glad you're there but you're glad to get home. And that's how I feel most of the time.

I fall in love with all the people I'm working with, women, directors, everybody. As actors, that's actually one of the real pleasures of the work. You have this weird opportunity to get unnaturally close to people very quickly.

I've always been pretty levelheaded. In show business you need to have a certain internal stability.

You have to learn to deal with your own, for want of a better word, insecurities, fears. They don't go away. And that's normal. It's human. You don't ever really want to lose that. What you want to do is learn to manage it and to work with yourself. But there's a part of you that has anticipation and fear. And so the important thing to know is that there's nothing wrong with that and that that's normal. You have to learn how to deal with it, certainly, but it doesn't keep you from doing it. And that doesn't go away ever.

Some people say talent is energy and that's a very interesting way of thinking about it. In other words, people with talent have a lot of energy.

We're not all evil or all good, and we all make mistakes to one degree or another.

I'm just as intrigued by acting as ever. It's an ongoing process. There's no arrival. There's no point at which you say "Oh, OK, done it, got it." It just doesn't happen. And that's true of any creative endeavor. For me, it's just a lifelong interest. I'm very much interested in the craft. I started by doing plays and it took me a long time to feel comfortable doing movies, working with cameras. I felt like I was a theater actress pretending that I was a movie actress for quite a while. Now, I just love the process of working with cameras and being on a set and trying to put a film together.

Maybe that's one of the virtues of the 2016 election that we're going through is all of this racism and xenophobia and sexism and whatever else you want to say is being exposed, maybe that's a blessing. I'm trying to look at the positive side of what's been happening in our country, which is frightening.

Most of the people that I've worked with when shooting films that I really respect, there is a point which you do become obsessed in a good way. And because it's a collaborative medium, you're not by yourself in a room tearing your hair out, you're in a room with a bunch of people. And we're all tearing our hairs out, or trying to get something right, or caring deeply about something. But that's fun.

Things either become unclear in a story or they're just ambiguous with no real point. So defined gray area with clarity that also works in the narrative, that's tricky.

I love watching people listen. And on film often some of the best moments if you think about favorite moments on film, often the person isn't even talking.

We want to be seen for who we really are, and each person has his own complex story and reasons for doing what they do.