Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Australian actress Essie Davis.
Last updated on December 25, 2024.
Esther Davis is an Australian actress and singer, best known for her roles as Phryne Fisher in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and its film adaptation, Miss Fisher & the Crypt of Tears, and as Amelia Vanek in The Babadook. Other major works include a recurring role as Lady Crane in season six of the television series Game of Thrones, Sister Iphigenia in Lambs of God, and the role of Ellen Kelly in Justin Kurzel's True History of the Kelly Gang.
I always knew I wanted to go to NIDA. I think I was very fortunate, and I do doubt myself often, but I didn't see any possibility of me not going to NIDA. I believed in myself, and I believed that, if you really do want something, you get it.
I feel lucky that I've managed to get the roles I've wanted.
I personally don't resent having my children.
I've really had a great career. It's been part fortune and part my own choices that steered my own career into playing the great roles that I've played on stage in Australia and at the National and West End in London and on Broadway.
I often get mistaken for all different kinds of ages; some of them flattering, some of them not.
I'm incredibly ambitious, but I feel I've got a fantastic career, and I love the anonymity. I love that no one knows who I am.
I want to carry a really great role in a great film.
Being a mother impacts every aspect of your life. It's a rite of passage which gives you an entirely different outlook on things.
I think the unemployment rate for actors is pretty much the same in Sydney, London and New York. In all three cities, there are more actors than there are jobs. But I do think that there are far more acting opportunities in London and New York than in Sydney, where there are approximately seven actors that you see over and over again in every play.
It's such a magnificent thing to be able to love someone and expect nothing from them.
Trying to get over to the 'on camera' side of things has been hard work.
There are many books that I love dearly, and I've seen many televised or film recreations that I just haven't thought were up to scratch.
I grew up with a love of words.
'The Custodian' was my first film, and there were so many lessons to learn in that week. It was really fun, but for me, I look at it as a training film, and I'm not really proud of my work in it.
I do like having a private life.
Most mothers think they are bad mothers. We all make terrible mistakes, often, and always think we're getting it wrong.
Goals are essentially private things.
I think every character rubs off on you a little bit.
I think my morals are perfectly... tight!
I used to buy things for every hotel room or every place I lived in to make it feel like home.
Sometimes it's easy to do brave things in front of a thousand people, but it's hard to do them in front of a handful. It feels so much more exposing.
It's hard, but what's the point of having children unless you're there to raise them, I reckon.
Parenting is meant to be just a natural part of life. You just think you know how to do it but, of course, it's much more complicated than that.
'The Slap' is not like anything else. It's an incredibly well-written novel that has been turned into a great and intriguing series that reveals both less and more about each character than you learn in the book. It's a novel that has been given a second chance to live.
I have children, and they demand my full and complete attention. They get that when I'm at home, even during the night, but it is really hard, and I do wonder how a lot of women do it without bawling their eyes out every day.
I was terrified of being a mum because I didn't think I'd ever be grown up enough.
I miss my friends in London, and I really miss New York. But I also miss the stability of staying in one place and being able to just open a drawer if you've run out of sticky tape and chuck a new roll in the holder.
Awards and nominations really help sell films.
There are some jobs that you go for because achieving them would take your career in a direction that you would like it to go, but mostly, I want to play the roles and have had the great good fortune and opportunities to play some fantastic roles and been very, very fortunate.
Getting fan mail from Brazil is kind of funny.
I wanted to be an actor, but only because I wanted to be everything, and that was the only way I could be a marine biologist as well.
I think it's an actor's gift to be as old as people think you are.
I'm a fan of mindfulness, and if colouring in is a way of reaching mindfulness, then I think it's great. But I'm amazed that anyone has the time to do that. I certainly don't.
Film directors don't come to the theatre in Sydney. In London and New York, they do.
I want to have the great roles that move people profoundly. I want to have the choice and be given the opportunity to play those roles, and unfortunately, fame plays a huge part in that.
I honestly do think that every character - you pick up the things, little things that you like about them in your life. Especially if you play a character for a long time.
I learn the techniques and then take what I need. I have the Essie Davis technique of acting. I'm an instinctive actress.
I never said I wanted to be a movie star.
I don't know if I want to walk down the street and have everyone staring. I think that would be awful. I'm a pretty shy person, really.
As soon as you become a parent, everyone gives you their parenting advice. It's like an onslaught of information about how other people do it.
People who don't know how old I am can cast me as the woman in 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' and can cast me as Stella in 'Streetcar Named Desire,' and they are miles apart.
Phryne Fisher could walk down the red carpet; Essie Davis is something else.
I would love to get a job in France!
I have learnt a lot about theatre, and I would like to know the same about film.
I love Australia and loved growing up here, and that's something I don't want to deny our children, but it's difficult sustaining a career in Australia.
Everyone has a point of view about corporal punishment.
It's nice being married to somebody who thinks you've got something better in you.
Even if the Tonys aren't as glitzy as the Oscars, being a part of the ceremony is no less exciting.
I've had really a great choice of roles that have been very different from one another. And I think I kind of set out to do that when I began my career - to aim to never play the same thing twice.
The news is so instantly available to us without delay, interpretation, or a filter. What is hot right now is streamed live without context or perspective.
I'm just a very fortunate actor who has not been typecast.
There's something great about being on location with a bunch of people - there's a camaraderie and intimacy that builds up over time.
Even though I love fashion and the red carpet dresses are a great, fun, glorious thing, I don't really have my finger on the pulse, as Phryne Fisher does, of the fashion industry.
Acting is embarrassing.
I've sung before, first in a band in high school and then in a band in Norway, but never in a musical.
One of the things I have loved so much about the career that I have had is that pretty much every character I have played is diametrically opposite to the one before it.
I never spend more than a week away from the children.
I think you've got to understand your character and where they're coming from.