A Quote by Jennifer Jason Leigh

People can have so many ill-conceived ideas about me based on the parts that I play. I've had guys, when I've been single, come out of the woodwork to date me and I've found out very quickly that they were expecting some kind of whirlwind, some dramatic crazy person - and that's just not me.
I've had guys, when I've been single, come date me and I've found out they were expecting some kind of whirlwind, some dramatic crazy person-- and that's just not me. I'd much rather be in a movie that people have really strong feelings about than one that makes a hundred million dollars but you can't remember because it's just like all the others.
I made some shorts that I'm not in. I think because I write so many short stories, it's not that hard to come up with characters that are not me. But my way into making movies has been through performing. My very first short film, I played a child and her own mother. So in some ways, to me, my great achievement so far is just that I've gotten all these other people to play the other parts. That's what makes it a real movie.
People still tweet me like, "Oh my god, I just found out you guys are married!" Which makes sense to me because I'm not the type of person who is like, "I love this actor, let me find out everything about their lives."
I was never too interested in high school. I mean, I never went to a dance, I never went out on a date, I never went steady. It became pretty awful for me. Except, of course, I could go see bands, and that was the kick. I used to go to Cleveland just to see any band. So I was in love a lot of the time, but mostly with guys in bands that I had never met. For me, knowing that Brian Jones was out there, and later that Iggy Pop was out there, made it kind of hard for me to get too interested in the guys that were around me. I had, uh, bigger things in mind.
A lot of musicians have said things to me like, "Music saved my life". And "I'm standing on the shoulders of dozens of people that you've never heard of that were like angels for me that came out of the woodwork." And that's really the case for me. I had so many people that did those kinds of things for me.
I'm definitely not the most graceful person out there. I've always been taught to play hard. I don't know how not to play hard. But for some guys it just looks easier. For me, it's not that natural.
Cody and I had a connection pretty quickly. We were engaged pretty quickly, but my moment where I knew this was definitely the person for me was when Cody asked me on a date to Halloween Horror Night at Universal Studios. Nobody had ever asked me on a date to Halloween Horror Night, and I had never been even though I am a horror fanatic.
I always kind of divided the gay guys I met up into two groups when I first started coming out. There were the guys who thought there was something fundamentally wrong with them and hated themselves and were so burdened with shame and internalized homophobia. It just really paralyzed and shredded them. And then there were guys like me who thought, "I'm fine, everybody else is crazy. My church is sick and the family's crazy, but me? I'm fine."
While acting in Armed Response I was always focused, just so they could see me as a peer and maybe not some idiot who's coming in from the pro-wrestling world. I'm sure they had their preconceived notions about me so I just hope that once we were finished with a scene, or finished with the movie overall, that I managed to change their perspective based on what they were expecting.
Television is just amazing - how many people see it and how many people recognize you, and I think once you've had the opportunity and have been in front of the public, it's very flattering to have people come up and say hello to you. It's a tremendous industry. I've been in places where people come out of the woodwork. And you would never think - small towns in France or traveling through Europe - and there are so many of those people there that recognize you, and you've been in their homes. I find it to be a very flattering thing.
If a person ever came to me as a fan and tried to go out on a date, I wouldn't. I've had enough kind of crazy experiences in that department.
Everybody deals with stress differently. Some people drink, some people use drugs, some people watch TV. I have always found that extreme athletics chills me out and leaves me in a very centered place.
And in some ways, to me, that's one of the inspiring and powerful things about the Great Migration itself. There was no leader, there was no one person who set the date who said, 'On this date, people will leave the South.' They left on their own accord for as many reasons as there are people who left. They made a choice that they were not going to live under the system into which they were born anymore and in some ways, it was the first step that the nation's servant class ever took without asking.
I thought some of the stories were neat; I liked some of the liturgy and some of the songs. If you're a writer you have some inclination to pay attention. I didn't just tune it out and think about baseball. So, it had an effect on me.
So for me, fashion was about standing out as an individual - and it helped me get the attention that most people try to get with publicity stunts or by doing other crazy things. But I just let the attention come to me naturally, and I think some of that has to do with my fashion.
Hymns have always sounded like sung spells to me. I never felt included in the magic of the God songs I heard growing up - I knew I was going to hell before anyone ever told me that I was. People found comfort in this all-knowing source, but I felt frightened and found out. I developed some weird and very dramatic complexes.
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