Top 123 Quotes & Sayings by Frances McDormand - Page 2

I tried taking a year off when Pedro was a toddler because I really wanted to be around, but it wasn't good for any of us.

At least three times a week, I'm approached by someone who says something about 'Fargo.'

Long-format television is a better way to tell a female story.

Cinematic icons of the police detective are more male role models than female.

I went to high school in a steel town in Pennsylvania.

I've given just as much of my life to that, and I practiced it with the same zeal, as I have acting. And I think that many of my skill sets from being a housewife I used for producing. Because you don't stop until it's done.

I have a very short attention span.

Unless it's a flat-out farce, an actor can't play comedy on film.

I think that cosmetic enhancements in my profession are just an occupational hazard. But I think, more culturally, I'm interested in starting the conversation about aging gracefully and how, instead of making it a cultural problem, we make it individuals' problems.

You just have to play the character.

I can do a good John Wayne.

I wasn't into sports, but I was really into Shakespeare.

I haven't done much press for many reasons, but mostly because it's not an interesting dialogue about work that's been done. It's turned into something else. It's become this ridiculous other thing.

I'm really interested in playing my age.

A 90-minute time frame is not long enough to tell a good female story, and that's why long-format television has become so great for female storytelling and for female performers and directors and writers.

It could be partly my taste. It's just my belief that there are female characters that will benefit from not being vulnerable.

In comparison to other women in the world, perhaps I'm seen as smaller. But I've never had a problem thinking of myself as a large woman.

No actor has complete freedom.

I would disagree that America is any more racist or ridiculous than anywhere else.

I've always known that I'll have a career for the rest of my life because they'll always make movies about men, and men need women in their lives. But, when it comes to telling a woman's story, they're complex, circular, and not genre-driven.

KWMR is my radio station, and I intend to have a job there as I get older. That's what I'm lobbying for. They don't need me. They've got plenty of people. But let's see if I can make myself indispensable.

I can't do the frappuccino. It's too sweet. I need it straight.

I read books. Remember those? I read them, on paper.

The last scene in 'Moonlight,' that's one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen on film in my lifetime. You see two men showing such tenderness towards each other. And it's bold; it's deep. It's complex. It's profound.

I've made a professional reputation playing working-class, middle-class, American women. There's a real sense of stoicism and pragmatism and strength and lyricism of a woman like that.

My feminist training was that this was your goal, to be a self-sufficient woman, but that is a miscalculation. It's just not the way we work. We work in dialogue with the community.

We appreciate quiet living. It's not exactly a Hollywood way of life - I couldn't stand living out in Hollywood because you can never escape from the business. All people ever do is talk about movies. At least in New York you can have some other life.

My father was a minister, and it was more my mother that had the responsibility of making sure the family put out an outward of appearance of living what he was preaching. She was the PR.

People love to drop in 'you betcha' as often as they can.

I buy books, I have shelves of books. I love to read.

I think awards are good for the movie. They can bring a new audience to the movie. I've always claimed that things like that don't get you work. Work gets you work. That's my blue-collar, protestant work ethic.

Unless I'm on a stage, I don't want to be the event in someone's day.

What's wrong with Hell's Kitchen? You don't change a neighborhood by changing its name. You change it by building a school.

I will go to my grave being known as Marge Gunderson. It'll be on my gravestone if I have one. I don't mind that, because it was a great character.

I want to separate my professional life from my personal life. I want to live a normal life and be a normal mother.

It's kind of a subversive act to tell a story of a woman past a certain age, to develop a four-hour movie based on a marriage and a story of two people past middle age.

Even though I'm an actor, I've gone to productions where there has been someone whose work is known in film, and you can't take your eyes off them. It unbalances the production. Whether they're good or not, it doesn't matter.

I like being my age. I kind of have a political thing about it.

I love flying by the seat of my pants, going at something instinctually.

I never read books - and still don't read books - to develop them.

Yale? I was at Yale on a scholarship.

I have friends who are movie stars, and I think it's just as hard a job as being a working actor. But it's a different job, and it's not the one I want.

I've never been someone who needs a lot of takes or enjoys a lot of takes. I like the fast thing of it.

There is simply too much of my life that is involved in my work that I couldn't replicate in any other way.

I'm not really interested in promoting 'Olive' as a series about depression or mental illness.

There's something healing about tears.

If you take it as a compliment that you don't look your age, then you're really shooting yourself in the foot.

Unfortunately, any girl - unless you're playing the action hero - is going to end up at some point handcuffed, gagged, and waiting for the hero to save her.

In my theater work, I've had much more three-dimensional, broader-stroke characters.

I am not a director or a writer, but a filmmaker.

I learned how to read in second grade, and I entered a summer contest at my local library in Chattanooga, Tennessee. If you read more books than anybody else, you got your Polaroid up on the bulletin board, and I did.

Here's what I have at my advantage: I've never been a personality. I've always been a character actor.

I've got a rubber face. It has always served me very well and really helps, especially as I get older, because I still have all my road map intact, and I can use it at will.

I was very good until I left home to go to a little college in West Virginia, and then I started to break some rules.

Who can worry about a career? Have a life.

There’s no desire to be an adult. Adulthood is not a goal. It’s not seen as a gift. Something happened culturally: No one is supposed to age past 45 — sartorially, cosmetically, attitudinally. Everybody dresses like a teenager. Everybody dyes their hair. Everybody is concerned about a smooth face.

I don't need a director who's 'good with actors.'...A master manipulator is heaven.

After Blood Simple, everybody thought I was from Texas. After Mississippi Burning, everybody thought I was from Mississippi and uneducated. After Fargo, everybody's going to think I'm from Minnesota, pregnant, and have blonde hair. 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.

Not everything comes along just when you want it. There are times when choices just have to be made or you'll simply miss out.

I'm a recreational pot-smoker. There has never been enough of a distinction between marijuana and other drugs. It's a human rights issue, a censorship issue, and a choice issue.