A Quote by Annette Bening

When I started, I was a theater actress, and there were roles that I couldn't imagine not playing, like Rosalind in 'As You Like It.' I used to think I would die if I could play that. But then I started doing movies, and I had children, and I moved to Los Angeles. And now I kind of can't remember what those roles would be.
I'm not getting into rooms for cis roles. I started my career auditioning for those roles, and then I went to play trans roles. And now, I feel boxed in.
When I started acting, doing theater stuff at a young age, I was always the comic relief-type roles, so I knew I had a funny bone and could make groups of people laugh, but I didn't really take it seriously until I started getting paid on a weekly basis; then I was like, 'Oh, well, this could be a lifestyle.'
After Bottle Rocket, I started getting acting work. People started offering me roles in movies. It wasn't something that I thought about as a kid growing up in Texas. Actually, maybe I would have thought of it as a possibility, but it seemed so crazily far-fetched to think that you could work in movies that I really didn't ever quite imagine it. It was just lucky.
When I started off as an actress, I did at a play at the Taper Too Theatre here in Los Angeles, called 'In The Abyss Of Coney Island.' That was more of a dramatic play. It was a small theater house. This was the first time I was literally on the road, doing a play, for four months.
I did tons of theater in school, and then when I was 16 and got my driver's license, I started driving to Los Angeles, along with my friend Eric Stoltz, who was a year ahead of me and was doing the same thing. So we had the same manager, and we started auditioning for things and doing commercials when we were 16.
I started in comedy when I first started as an actor on stage and doing improvisational theater and stuff like that. So a lot of people who know me know that sort of side of me. But I got the roles that I got as an young actor kind of steered me in a different direction, which were, at times, darker characters. And so comedy was not something that came easy for people to think of my in those terms.
I used to imagine what it would be like to do what Jim Brown was doing. I used to imagine what it would be like to be like a Tony Dorsett. I used to imagine what it would be like to be like a Walter Payton. I was imagining Emmitt Smith doing exactly what they were doing.
I went to drama school in Paris and started doing theatre with a friend. Then I moved into movies and slowly but surely I got roles.
For a long time, way back in the โ€™30s and โ€™40s, there were fabulous female roles. Bette Davis and all those people had incredible, great roles. After World War II, something happened where it was not only "get out of the factories," but "get out of the movies." That's when women's roles started to really [change].
I began with small roles in successful movies like 'No Country For Old Men' by the Coen brothers; but it was 'The Last Exorcism' that changed my life: with what I earned, I left Texas and moved to Los Angeles.
I like doing what I do, but I like having the opportunity to do different things, and obviously comedy would be a fun jump. I've just been lucky enough to stay working. In my case, playing intense roles or playing character roles is something that people will hire me for, but yeah, I'd like somebody to think I'm funny. I guess we all do, right?
When I first started playing, I definitely had a younger scum-punk crowd, but as my music developed more and after I started playing electric guitar - you'd think it would be opposite - but a lot of people were like, "You've changed." And I have more of an older audience now.
I think the parts I was offered when I was younger, where I was asked to play that kind of slacker person, that was just because people would go, "Oh, she has dyed black hair." I guess that's how they thought I looked. I played a couple of those roles, and then unfortunately you get pigeonholed really fast, and then you just keep getting asked to do that. And now it would be weird at the age of 46 for me to play a slacker. It would look like I was nuts.
I have been doing a lot of romantic movies, so such roles don't excite me much now. I would like to play an out-and-out, really cruel villain once. My character in 'Da Thadiya' had such a streak, but I want a full length villainous role. It is a different kind of excitement.
I got started as an actress doing musical theater, and I always loved 'Grease' and 'West Side Story,' and all those kind of movies.
In other ways, you constantly have to change people's opinion of you as one thing, especially if you want to play different roles. You have to shatter that image sometimes. I've had to do it before with stage roles, to get roles. I'm drawn to kind of darker, misfit things. I would like to, especially in film, play against type and do some heavier stuff. I'm intrigued by projects that deal with problematic people and things.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!