Top 123 Quotes & Sayings by Frances McDormand
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actress Frances McDormand.
Last updated on November 3, 2024.
I'm a character actress, plain and simple... Who can worry about a career? Have a life. Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.
It was really fascinating for everyone involved in 'Fargo' that Marge Gunderson became the iconic character she did. I think it was something about the cultural zeitgeist and what was happening with women in the workplace.
My son smelled like a cinnamon bun, and that smell entered into my biological being, and it became an imperative that I keep him alive at all costs, so then there's this monster - this tiger or lion - that comes forward in you to protect them. And it doesn't stop. It doesn't matter if they become men or women.
My name is Frances Louise McDormand, formerly known as Cynthia Ann Smith. I was born in Gibson City, Ill., in 1957. I identify as gender-normative, heterosexual, and white-trash American. My parents were not white trash. My birth mother was white trash.
Growing up a preacher's kid wasn't the easiest thing. Everybody's always watching you to see how you'll behave - or misbehave.
I think that ageism is a cultural illness; it's not a personal illness.
Guess what? I am an ordinary person.
It's like some weird excuse for high school kids to vomit. It's not good. It's stupid. I'm sure that's not what St. Patrick's Day is supposed to be about, but who knows.
Because of my own insecurities about the way I look, I do sometimes sabotage the looks of my characters by making them as homely as possible. I've never done a glamour part. I'd like to some day, though I don't know if I could pull it off.
There's only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power.
I never trusted good-looking boys.
I think that there's a clinical mental illness called depression, but I believe that post-industrial America has been narcotized by progress. There's a cultural malaise - mental illness or no - that everybody suffers from at some point in their life.
I haven't wanted to play a mother for a long time because I am one.
Something happened culturally: No one is supposed to age past 45 - sartorially, cosmetically, attitudinally.
I'm trained in the theater, and acting, for me, is about the imaginative life I create for myself, not about basing it on something real. I think that whatever I create becomes the reality for the audience.
I became interested in educating people in the variety of ways in which women can express their emotion. Which is much easier to do in a large role than in a supporting role to a male protagonist. In general, the women in a supporting role to a male protagonist - cry a lot.
It's much easier to play supporting roles because that's what I do in my life: I support my son.
It's a scary thing going into the workforce with a $50,000 debt and you've been trained as a classical theatre actor. There's always a depression in the theatre.
Getting older and adjusting to all the things that biologically happen to you is not easy to do and is a constant struggle and adjustment.
I portray female characters, so I have the opportunity to change the way people look at them. Even if I wasn't consciously doing that, it would happen anyway just because of how I present as a woman, or as a person. I present in a way that's not stereotypical, even if I'm playing a stereotypical role.
One of the reasons I am successful as a producer is that I've been a very successful housewife.
All the skills of housewifery are the ones I'm using as a producer.
I want to be revered. I want to be an elder; I want to be an elderess.
With aging, you earn the right to be loyal to yourself.
The only power you have is the word no.
I was often told that I wasn't a thing. 'She's not pretty enough. She's not tall enough. She's not thin enough. She's not fat enough.' I thought, 'O.K., someday you're going to be looking for someone not, not, not, not, and there I'll be.'
Most women's pictures are as boring and as formulaic as men's pictures. In place of a car chase or a battle scene, what you get is an extreme closeup of a woman breaking down.
We wrote 'Olive Kitteridge' as six hours, and they asked us to make it in four.
My politics are private, but many of my feminist politics cross over into my professional life.
I have not mutated myself in any way.
You can't make a rule about it. The minute you make a rule, it's like putting your wedding pictures in 'In Style' magazine - you're divorced.
Female characters in literature are full. They're messy: they've got runny noses and burp and belch. Unfortunately, in film, female characters don't often have that kind of richness.
Certainly, a lot of the films I've worked on have ended up good movies, but they haven't always been the best experiences.
The fact that I'm sleeping with the director may have something to do with it.
If you want to talk about cultural appropriation, we have to go back to the Greeks.
Adulthood is not a goal. It's not seen as a gift.
I don't think you can ever completely transform yourself on film, but if you do your job well, you can make people believe that you're the character you're trying to be.
I am an ordinary person.
I was completely naive about the business of being an actor. My family didn't go to the theater or to the movies. We watched television like every 1960s small-town American family, and I certainly never thought about being on TV. I thought I was going to be a classical actor in the grand tradition.
I like hard rock, and classic rock, and even metal.
Everybody dresses like a teenager. Everybody dyes their hair. Everybody is concerned about a smooth face.
We don't need a lot of initiatives for women in film; what we need is money.
We are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species. There's no desire to be an adult.
I'm not a depressive, but I certainly have mood swings. It's an occupational hazard, I would say, and I'm glad I'm in the occupation I'm in.
That's another great thing about getting older. Your life is written on your face.
My position has always been that the way people age and the signs that we show of aging is nature's way of tattooing. It's natural scarification, and the life you lead gives you the symbols and the emblems of your life, the road map you followed.
I'm attracted to male gestures and sexuality.
Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.
I'm not really that interested in going back to playing small supporting roles.
A movie set actually can be a good place to have a family atmosphere.
The crew on 'Three Bilboards,' by the way, is one of the best I've ever worked with. And that's not hyperbole.
I don't think of myself as a movie star and I can pretty easily convince other people that I'm not a movie star.
If, when I leave this earth, I'm remembered for 'Fargo,' so be it. But I think old Marge Gunderson is gonna get a run for her money with Olive Kittredge.
I was too old, too young, too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, too blond, too dark - but at some point, they're going to need the other. So I'd get really good at being the other.
I swear a lot; I always have. So does my husband. Our son, surprisingly, does not swear much at all.
When you lose a spouse, you're a widow or widower; when you lose your parents, you're an orphan. When you lose a child, there's no word in the English language for that position, that place that you're left.
I'm not an actor because I want my picture taken. I'm an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange.
I'm from working-class, blue-collar America, and I don't believe that people in that socioeconomic strata wait until they're 40 to have children.
I know I'm profane. And outspoken.
I went to my school careers counselors and said I wanted to be an actor, and they didn't know what to do. They showed me catalogues with pretty campuses and said, 'Oh, look, there's a theater building. Why don't you go there?'
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