A Quote by Allison Janney

I was a hard fit at a young age. I didn't make sense as an ingenue or a leading love-interest lady. — © Allison Janney
I was a hard fit at a young age. I didn't make sense as an ingenue or a leading love-interest lady.
I guess I've never really had a great desire to be a leading lady, or be seen as an ingenue.
I'm a leading lady character actor; I don't fit in one slot simply. I've always been used to a certain amount of struggle, and that prepared me wonderfully for a mature age.
I have never been an easy fit. I'm a leading lady character actor; I don't fit in one slot simply.
I come from the theater, and I've done a lot of character work in the theater, but Hollywood stuff in film and TV, they've been more leading lady/ingenue type roles.
I think of myself more as a character actor than that ingenue leading lady, who started out something like Michelle Pfeiffer, or Jessica Lange. I'm a bit quirkier than that.
I had a professor in graduate school who told us, 'Know what you're good at, and do that thing.' And I thought, 'Hands down, I'm an ensemble girl. I'm a fierce ensemble girl. I am dependable.' I was never seen for the ingenue or the leading lady.
I was always the hero with no vices, reciting practically the same lines to the leading lady. The current crop of movie actors are less handicapped than the old ones. They are more human. The leading men of silent films were Adonises and Apollos. Today the hero can even take a poke at the leading lady. In my time a hero who hit the girl just once would have been out.
No young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.
In almost every musical ever written, there's a place that's usually about the third song of the evening - sometimes it's the second, sometimes it's the fourth, but it's quite early - and the leading lady usually sits down on something; sometimes it's a tree stump in Brigadoon, sometimes it's under the pillars of Covent Garden in My Fair Lady, or it's a trash can in Little Shop of Horrors... but the leading lady sits down on something and sings about what she wants in life. And the audience falls in love with her and then roots for her to get it for the rest of the night.
On 'Swingtown,' I think that's when I was able to blend the character-slash-leading lady roles, and that's what I'm doing on 'Once Upon a Time' as well. She's a leading lady, but she's also this character.
Not that it was Twiggy's fault, but the ubiquity of her image created a sense in young women that to be stylish meant to be skinny, flat-chested with an ingenue face and straight hair.
I know it's hard to believe that I'm no longer the young 'Zuri' everyone has grown to love, which I truly appreciate, but like every young lady, I'm growing, I'm maturing and finding myself at 16 years old discovering the joys and pains of the world we live in.
'Heroes' was great, but I was like the sorority sister, the friend. So often, we as black women, we are cast as the best friend; we are rarely the leading lady. So for me, being on 'The Flash,' it's been so important for me to be the leading lady, to be the woman that is desired by the superhero, to be the hero herself.
I never felt like a happy-go-lucky ingenue to begin with. And parts are written better when you're older. When you're young, you're written to be an ingenue, and you're written to be a quality. You're actually not written to be a person, you're written for your youth to inspire someone else, usually a man. So I find it just much more liberating.
I played the ingenue, of course, when I was young - but even with those, I tried to make interesting choices and mess them up a little bit - make them layered and complicated and not all stereotypes.
It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry. Imagine then the interest that surrounded Miss Wintertowne! No young lady ever had such advantages before: for she died upon the Tuesday, was raised to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and was married upon the Thursday; which some people thought too much excitement for one week.
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