A Quote by Miranda Otto

I find, in film, we're always making things and having these intense friendships and then losing track of people. When I first start a job, I'm quite nervous, and it takes me a while to find my place, and then it feels like I'm just really loving it and feeling great, and it's all over.
I used to work in TV and quit the job because I couldn't do it any more. I quite like taking my time over a film, five years is how long it takes me to work something out. And when you just do quick turnover, turnaround, I'm literally this is driving me mad, I want to find another living. I'll just have to find a creative way to tell the story.
Every time I do one I feel like I've never really quite learned anything. I always find that when I'm making a film, I find it a little bit like I'm doing it for the first time.
Being an actor can be a cruel experience because there is no cooling-down period. You can be involved in something that's incredibly intense, but then it's a wrap and you've finished and you go home. I find it difficult to complete a job and then return to reality and find my healthy place.
I loved the city, so the feeling in 2001 [election] first was shock, then (I was) nervous, then scared but then it's - I really wasn't happy and ecstatic like I thought I (would be). I was immediately hit with the enormity of the responsibility and the fact that most people in that town - particularly those that voted for me were placing their hopes and dreams in me. That is a big, big stressful place to be.
I am never happy when I finish a book. I always start feeling good, and then I get to about Page 75 and start losing momentum - and I kind of pull it together at the end, but by then I think it's just all over. It's become almost a running joke among my agent and my editor - I always say that, so they don't take me seriously anymore.
I ain't never found no place for me to fit. Seem like all I do is start over. It ain't nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself.
To me, all guitar players can play, because I know they're getting to where they're at. It's a very hard instrument to accept, because it takes years to start working with it, that's first, and it looks like everybody else is moving on the instrument but you. Then when you find a cat that's really playing, you always find that he's been playing a long time, you can't get around it.
I feel like being an actor it is a great way to do your job and be a parent, because you have a lot of freedom. You have a job and then the job ends and than maybe you don't have another job for a while or maybe you chose not have another job for a while. For an actor, it's like maybe you don't see your kid for two weeks while you are filming but then you might have three months off where you are at home every day and picking him up from school. I find it's a great thing.
I hate to write and spend months just waiting for the film to get financed. Then when you start preparing the film and you shoot it, you've already forgotten why you wanted to make the film in the first place. I like to have some kind of coherent energy that takes you through writing, preparing, shooting.
Having had loving people who brought me up, and then I find another set of people. That really is a double blessing.
I love doing a television show. It just always feels like it's a little while before you find something that feels unique and that feels like a character that you really want to play for awhile.
I'll go in the studio and hear a track that I don't like, and they're trying to pay me to rap over it. But I'll tell them I just can't do it. And when they ask why, I say, 'Because then somebody's gonna hear it... damn, find another track.'
When I get nervous, I go to the library and hang around. The libraries are filled with people who are nervous. You can blend in with them there. You're bound to see someone more nervous than you are in a library. Sometimes the librarians themselves are more nervous than you are. I'll probably be a librarian for that reason. Then if I'm nervous on the job, it won't show. I'll just stamp books and look things up for people and run back and forth to the staff room sneaking smokes until I get hold of myself. A library is a great place to hid.
As an actor, you just want to work, and then you just want to be on a show or have a job that you love, and you hope that job will last - those things have happened. To have that platform to then talk about something that is very personal to me like marriage equality, it feels like a gift. I try and really respect that voice and not abuse it.
With film, I always sit with people first and talk a while, and then we read or sing or whatever. I never sit behind a table. I get up; I work with them. I do everything I possibly can to not audition them. I can find out the best of them from them feeling comfortable and appreciated. I'd never let someone leave feeling not valued.
There's something really nice about having a group of people that you're committed to, that you work with and that there's a future in it. Film is like a party, and then it's over, whereas this hopefully feels like a family.
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