Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actress Sissy Spacek.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
Mary ElizabethSpacek is an American actress and singer. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and nominations for four British Academy Film Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award. Spacek was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011.
Fame sweeps you away. I had to go home every six months to remember who I am.
There's a real danger in trying to stay king of the mountain. You stop taking risks, you stop being as creative, because you're trying to maintain a position. Apart from anything else that really takes the fun out of it.
I've been into exercise my whole life, been a runner and been into health and fitness always.
The name Sissy came because my brothers called me that.
You don't forget the movies, but you forget the details of them.
I connect with just plain old everyday people. Human behavior fascinates me, the people who are the nuts and bolts of this country who help hold up the world.
Texas is just so rich with characters. Women who live alone in a little house on a thousand acres with nothing but cattle and a pickup truck. And an airplane.
There's kind of a time you get warned about where the rug gets pulled out from under you: beyond ingenue, before you get into character stuff.
My father's family is German and Czech.
I think my mother's family came on the Mayflower from England - D.A.R., you know.
I'm a fool for a good role in a creative piece where there are really such talented writers and wonderful actors.
I actually never got in a play in school. My teacher said I never learned my lines.
I'm drawn to ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, which is a big part of the human condition.
There's nothing like not washing your teeth or washing your face or brushing your teeth in the morning.
I'm not very big. But I've got a big bark and a lot of heart.
I didn't worry about leaving the fast lane - I was just so consumed with my baby that it seemed like the right thing to do. I never felt like I left New York, though. If you've lived in a place and loved it, you never feel like you left it.
The important thing is to be part of a good project with good, talented people.
Just about every town in Texas has a beauty pageant. Ours was called The Dogwood Fiesta. I was in one of those. I played the guitar and sang - and lost.
Ultimately, you have to work for your own enlightenment - for smarts - or it gets boring.
I am a woman of simple tastes.
I had no fear 'cause it seemed everyone in the audience always applauded whatever I did. Course, maybe it was because I always seemed to know everyone in the audience.
I write about Texas, New York, California and Virginia, and they're all important places in my repertoire.
That's what I love about acting and love and drama and art: that humanness we all share.
For me, life is a bowl of cherries.
Nature is really big and loud the farther south you get.
You know, I don't know what the future will bring, but I'm ready for whatever comes!
Jingle taps on the majorette boots were an important part of a little girl growing up in the South.
Junior and senior high school years were not a good time.
I lived an idyllic 'Huckleberry Finn' life in a tiny town. Climbing trees. Tagging after brothers. Happy. Barefoot on my pony. It was 'To Kill a Mockingbird'-esque.
I don't like to do something just to prove I can do it.
I had a dozen years to act before starting a family, then found that motherhood dwarfed everything else. Once or twice a year, I take a project that appeals to me for its redeeming social value.
When I started out in independent films in the early '70s, we did everything for the love of art. It wasn't about money and stardom. That was what we were reacting against. You'd die before you'd be bought.
For me, I never really wanted to be in a 'Sissy Spacek' vehicle. That was not my intention. I got to be the 'Everygirl.'
Most things in my life I had before leaving home. Values, support, great family. I was shaped at an early age. A musician playing guitar, I wanted to be a folk singer.
I wanted to put all my family stories down for my girls, and I remember everything so vividly. I just wanted to put everything down while I still can remember it all.
I only learn from the people I work with.
I've not had a mean life.
It's a whole other way of working when you work in films: You know exactly the arc of your character.
Music is my thing. In fact, that's what I wanted to do. I thought of myself as a musician. I had never thought about acting.
There have been several television movies, 'Carrie 2,' two musicals! I remember thinking, the first time there was a musical on Broadway, 'Oh my gosh! The people who ordinarily go to the theaters, that's not really the audience.'
I need to fill myself up with real life. That's kind of the well I draw from.
New York gets under your skin, and I think once you've fallen in love with New York, you take that with you. I love New York.
It's difficult to just let go of a character. Especially after you've been preparing and researching for weeks.
Our perception of celebrities in Hollywood is not the reality. The reality of our lives is so much like everyone else's life. We have family members we love, everyone gets up in the morning, they have three meals a day and they go about their business.
In every movie, there's always some physical thing that triggers the character for me. In 'The Long Walk Home,' it was the girdle. Every time I'd put that girdle on, I'd feel my character wiggle to life.
Texas is so big, and the place where I grew up was so little, and I was such a little thing growing up in the middle of it. I had two choices: I could either spend my life feeling insignificant, or I could look on the life I lived as a microcosm of the universe.
My parents were devoted. Civic minded. We had family counsels. Three of us children against two of them. We lived a 'Leave It to Beaver' time.
I go where the good work is being done.
Some families can experience terrible tragedy and deal with it, and others not. I find those things fascinating.
I think that no human gets away unscathed in this old life. We've all experienced loss and grief and pain and tragedy.
That was the magical thing about the Seventies: artists ruled. Because films were relatively low-budget, nobody cared. We could just go off and work.
I love the women I've played.
I've always been a people-watcher, and as an actor, later, I just mined all those little details.
If I hadn't left Texas, I might not have met the director Terrence Malick, and I wouldn't have met my husband and I wouldn't have had the children that I've had. Life is interesting like that.
It's not seeing myself 40 feet tall on a movie screen - it's the work. That's what thrills me.
Nature is my church. The wind in the trees and the bugs and the frogs. All those things are comfort to me.
I like horseback riding. I like to hike. I play guitar and sing.
I'm a fool for a brilliant filmmaker. And for someone who wants to try new things.
My cousin, Rip Torn, persuaded me not to change my name. You shouldn't change what you are in the search for success.
For a while, I just sang at a steakhouse. I would go from table to table and really just survived on tips.