Top 71 Quotes & Sayings by Jennifer Jason Leigh

I think I am talented - but I also think I'm very lucky.

You know, you really do choose your existence in a way.

I used to hang out by the food table at parties because you don't have to talk to anybody. If you do then you can talk about the food.

I'd much rather be in a movie that people have really strong feelings about than one that makes a hundred million dollars but you can't remember because it's just like all the others.

People equate success with youth. And if you haven't had a certain amount of success by a certain time in your life, it's never going to happen. There's a fear about that. So people start lying about their age really young. I've never done that because I think it's so insignificant.

I think that's an incredible thing that we can do as actors - to feel empathy toward someone that you may otherwise detest, you know?

I'd love to have children, and I think marriage is great, I really do.

I sort of spend every moment that I'm not working doing things with my son. You do the best you can, and you make the most of the time you have.

I used to go to Haagen-Dazs and order three banana splits at a time!

I've never really been a careerist; I've never been able to step back and look at anything in that way. I though this is just what happens. I did take my work very seriously. I loved immersing myself in a character. I loved getting the opportunity to do that. I didn't realize how extraordinary it was, how lucky I was, because I was young.

I'm so different to the roles I play, and perhaps that's why they are appealing to me as an actor. But I would never want to inhabit my characters' shoes in real life.

I could never play the ingenue, the girl next door or the very successful young doctor. That would be a bore.

Susie Waggoner in 'Miami Blues' is just such a sweetheart, such an innocent. When I watch that, I really feel like I'm watching Susie Waggoner. I don't really see myself. And there's a simplicity to it that I really like.

I love Polaroids and I have a Polaroid camera collection from the '50s.

When you get called to come in and audition for Tarantino, it's incredibly exciting.

I'm not great at judging a career. Or planning one.

There's a lot of magic involved in movies that as a child I really appreciated. So I love bringing my son to set. It reminds me of what I loved doing as a child, and also, as an actor, you have a lot of down time.

I love acting, but I am a mom, and the roles just weren't coming because of a mixture of things: because I'm not ambitious, and because I'm older, and I had a baby. I really felt like I had said a graceful and completely happy goodbye to acting in a significant way. And I had sort of made my peace with that.

I just don't plan things. I live a month at a time.

I think I live in this mythical world where doing the parts I do is not going to hurt me, and telling people my age is not going to hurt me. And it actually does. It's a bit sick-making but, you know, I can't change who I am.

'The Hateful Eight' is like theatre.

I feel like I had a great career in a way. Maybe not the most successful monetarily or in other ways, but creatively, I feel incredibly fortunate.

Being a good girl means suppressing a lot.

I really go against drama in my life. Life is too short.

When I find a role I want to play, I just go after it.

I'm a typical middle child. I'm the mediator. The one that makes everything OK, puts their own needs aside to make sure everybody's happy. It's hard to change your nature, even with years and years of therapy.

I like a movie that the audience actively has to participate in and not just casually observe.

One of the reasons that I do a lot of different kinds of pictures is because I learn a lot when I'm doing them.

I've always had so much admiration for my mom. She's so inspiring as a woman and as an artist.

I remember I once went to a nutritionist who said I come from good Russian-Jewish peasant stock, which means I can hold a potato in my body for a week, if need be.

Not to compare an actor to a painter, but you can go through different phases and still be the same artist, y'know?

I loved being on the set with my stepfather. I loved the magic of movies. I went on the set of 'The Mod Squad' - I mean, can you imagine? Just walking into a living room and then walking behind the living room, and it's just flat. There's nothing I love more than being on a sound stage.

Acting for kids is like playing house, you know? But growing up in Hollywood, it just made it seem possible.

Writing, producing and directing, I must say, is incredibly satisfying and gratifying.

My mom's a screenwriter, and before that, she was an actress, and my father was an actor; my stepfather was a director, so I was on sets a lot as a kid. I loved the magic of the set. You walk in, and it's a living room, and you walk outside, and it's just a piece of wood held up by another piece of wood.

Writing, producing and directing, I must say, is incredibly satisfying and gratifying. I've never been happier.

I love being in therapy. It's just constantly fulfilling for me.

My mother always helped me because she was kind of a research fanatic. When she would write a screenplay, there would be so much research all over the walls. And so when I started working as an actress, I would do the same thing. She instilled in me a love of taking everything very seriously. It didn't matter what it was.

It's very exciting to work with people who inspire you.

I like a movie that the audience actively has to participate in, and not just casually observe. Whatever my part in it, just as an audience member, I find that exciting.

I hate parties. I don't like big crowded things.

People can have so many ill-conceived ideas about me based on the parts that I play. I've had guys, when I've been single, come out of the woodwork to date me and I've found out very quickly that they were expecting some kind of whirlwind, some dramatic crazy person - and that's just not me.

I don't want to play the same person twice, that's not why I wanted to act.

I just don't want to talk about my personal life. I feel like it's mine, I'm not trying to promote it. It's nice to have things that are your own, that you value enough that you don't have to use to sell a movie.

I like to investigate all different kinds of people, I guess, and find out what makes them who they are, and try to be honest in the portrayal, and truthful, and find out how to understand that person, how to communicate that person's experience.

I don't really watch my moves all that often; I mean, really, I don't.

On film, I'm very mysterious, but in life I'm very dull.

I've always done roles that really appealed to me on a gut level and which I found inspiring.

'Georgia' is very personal to me. 'Anniversary Party' was great. 'Anomalisa' is also another one that, particularly, is in my heart and will be forever. I do think it's a masterpiece; I really do.

I'm a fraidy cat. I play everything very safe in my life, so I think that's why I like characters that don't.

I loved acting as a kid because I was kind of shy, so it brought me out of myself.

I think Robert Altman could see things in me that I didn't know I possessed, which is really exciting. He also instilled a tremendous amount of confidence, because he would say things like, "These are the bare bones, but I want you to go fill it out. You find the character. You bring it to me. You write whatever you want." And if you had an idea, he wouldn't want to hear about it. He's want you to show it to him.

Even if the role is very far away from me, to try and make it as nakedly me as possible is an intriguing notion.

I've never done anything that I felt was crossing the line for me. But everybody has to make that decision individually. Like, I've never shot heroin to play a heroin addict. I've never turned a trick to play a prostitute. Whatever. You draw the line where you feel it could be harmful.

For me, something dangerous would be playing thebabe in a huge studio film. That would be terrifying because I'dstink... I want to explore human beings on as deep a level as I can.

I don't need a reason to kill myself-I need a reason not to.

Quentin's [Tarantino] thing is "I don't want anybody to get up until they have to. So, because he really wants things to come organically. And he may have specific things like "No, this ... I want you to be here so that when he punches you, it falls. I want that action to happen here." But you feel like it does, all the blocking does come from an organic response to the material.

Even when you think you can detach yourself from the characters, you don't. Because you're spending so much time trying to realize this person and make them real that they do infect you, in a way. And you do take them home and live with them, even if you think you're turning the character off. But in order to pull off a role convincingly, you wind up thinking about that person all the time, and it does sort of creep into you. And then there are things that you'll respond to, or react to in a very different way than you would normally.

I hope my talent has something to do with it. I just think this business is so crazy. I obviously do the best I can, and the directors I admire see something in me. But this is a strange business, and there are people who are incredibly talented who never make it, who never get these opportunities. So that's why I say I'm lucky. I don't feel that I'm not talented - I think I am talented - but I also think I'm very lucky.

It usually takes about two and a half weeks after you're done filming where you kind of return to yourself again.