Top 145 Quotes & Sayings by Mary Steenburgen
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actress Mary Steenburgen.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
I was a waitress for six years in New York. I actually got fascinated to see how fast and how good a waitress I could be. I was doing it, so I tried to do it as well as I could.
I take the fact that films cost a lot of money very seriously, but once in a while to have somebody say, This is a big scene, take your time with it, is important. That's John Sayles.
'Step Brothers' is probably the film the most people who approach me want to talk about.
There's something inside of me that just connects or doesn't connect with the project.
Anything to do with the South resonates with me, because I'm Southern.
There's a certain arrogance to an actor who will look at a script and feel like, because the words are simple, maybe they can paraphrase it and make it better.
I did sing in a choir for a while, but if anybody was sick, I always whispered my songs to make sure nobody could pick out my voice.
The time that Ted and I spend talking about our careers is almost infinitesimally small. We mostly talk about our kids and our grandkids. I think we talk about our careers if something funny happened at work. We're very childlike in many ways.
Do I feel like I still need to prove myself? Absolutely. And I want to feel that way, and I like that.
I write music as a staff writer for Universal Music Group, and I have since 2007. I've never talked about it publicly because I wanted to earn the right to be in the same room as the great writers I write with and not shoot my mouth off because I'm an actor. It's really important to me, and I really care about it.
I feel like I'm attracted to characters who have one foot firmly planted on the ground. And their heads up in the clouds somewhere. Practical dreamers. They try to impress you that they've got this whole thing figured out, but there's more going on inside their heads than you might imagine.
There's a certain freedom that comes when people don't expect you to be sexy.
Christopher Lloyd was actually the first person - or certainly one of the first few - who ever spoke to me on film.
As an actor, you're always looking for, what do I get to do? It's not just what do I say, but what do I do, too.
If you're not growing, you're dying, and I'm not ready for that.
I'd already made the decision before I'd even read it-just because it was John Sayles. Then when I read it, the themes were actually themes that have been a big part of my life.
The sights and sounds and smells, the whole genre of Westerns - I love them.
I'm a very musical person.
At one point, I kind of looked in the mirror and said, 'You know, you're a mom. You're a wife. People count on you; you can't go off the deep end into this kind of crazy musical swirl.'
Will Forte is such a nice, extraordinarily creative human being. Utterly fearless.
I think, as an actor, you're constantly confronted with your fear of sticking your neck out.
I don't want to go to just watch big huge summer movies that everybody predicts is going to be the big huge summer movie and that are all the sort of blow-them-up movies or whatever you want to call them. I think there are a lot of other people out there, too, that want an alternative.
It's very easy to approach a character like that - a so-called strong woman who overcomes the odds - and give a one-note performance, playing that strength alone. Strength is only one thing a person has.
I think that we need to look hard at our beliefs and be responsible about how we speak out.
Anytime I had a date, it was at the Sadie Hawkins Day dance.
'Step Brothers' was like a reward for going through my whole career and somehow surviving.
I got my SAG card on my first movie, 'Goin' South,' with Jack Nicholson in 1978.
It's usually, my people speak to your people and then they speak around each other and trade calls for weeks.
I know this is kind of corny, but we thought about renewing our vows again because I think my mom would really love it if we did that in Arkansas, where I came from.
Hey, it's a miracle to have a career in Hollywood. But it doesn't begin to sum me up.
I helped found Artists for New South Africa, but it used to be called Artists for Free South Africa. Alfre Woodard and a bunch of us started this.
It was a few days later I came out to Hollywood for a screen test, and so did a lot of other people. So, I really didn't think I would get it. I was definitely the one that was least likely to get it, because everyone else was an already established star.
I've found that most people who studied when they were little, even if they never took another tap class, it's percussive, so it stays in your body, the muscle memory of it.
I don't know how I could plan my career.
I was this person with this weird last name from New York that no one had ever heard of. But my screen test I guess, according to him, was the best. So I got the part, which was incredible.
My mother was a gorgeous person with no vanity, but she was a really good soul.
I would say that the things that have really left a mark on me have more to do with my family and my children's lives rather than a film role.
Let me put it this way. There is more to acting than just acting like somebody. I like to act in such a way that other people get some notion of what it's like to be somebody.
There are no worse cliches than southern cliches. They make my skin crawl.
I'm a chameleon when it comes to languages.
I did 'Philadelphia' and 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape?' at the same time. It's kind of wonderful to do it that way, because you get very hyper-focused.
'Justified' had such dead-on beautiful scripts that you didn't want to mess with it.
I was excited to turn 60.
I wanted a relationship like the one my mother and father had. It wasn't perfect; they had to work on it. But there was an unbelievable mutual respect.
When I was going through sad times, I'd watch 'Cheers' at the end of the day to make me feel better.
I wish sometimes people wouldn't underestimate me. But it's a fleeting wish. It's not where I live.
I am lucky enough not to have to take jobs unless I love the material.
I started in improv and went into different kinds of things.
I remember when I was growing up and watching southern people depicted on television, I thought, 'Well, based on what I'm seeing, I guess I'm supposed to be stupid and racist.' It's still, sadly, the easy route for a writer to go.
Wii on Nintendo is amazing.
I panic at parties. I don't like talking absolutely nothing and pretending, so I'm quite odd socially.
I studied with Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. I was in the last class to study with him before he had his larynx removed, so I actually remember the sound of his voice. He was an incredible teacher.
I have never been able to sing in the shower, much less in front of anybody.
I have never had any success in planning my life, really.
I love to paint. And I have another profession - an interior design business.
I decided if you're lucky enough to be alive, you should use each birthday to celebrate what your life is about.
Essential oils are extremely important to me.
We don't want to be reminded that life ends at some point, so they don't put older people on the screen.
There's just such a premium on hurrying, and the camera is the be all and end all, and the actors had better hurry up and get it right and get it done.
I've had battles with writers who live in L.A. and were writing southern characters, because they felt like if they wrote 'Sugar' and 'Honey' at the end of every sentence, that would make it southern.
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