A Quote by Laura Dern
A lot of people have asked whether acting is in my genes. I don't know if anyone is born to act. And it certainly wasn't pushed on me. It was something I wanted to do.
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A lot of people don't know this, but when 'Dancing with the Stars' first asked me to be on the show, I said no, because I wanted to act and to be taken seriously.
I'd always wanted to act, but it was a question of whether acting wanted me and whether the movies wanted me.
I looked for acting classes in Paris just to do something different than modeling. And then one day I just thought, 'Okay, that's enough, I have to start doing something.' I went to the acting agency and I just told them I wanted to act and asked them if they would give me a chance, and they did.
Nothing affects my acting. Acting is something I do with my soul so it embodies a lot of things. For me, I don't know about anyone else, acting is spiritual, so if I do not embody a character or a story or a script, it's going to be extremely difficult for me to be convincing and I don't like that because I am somewhat of a perfectionist
I love the art of acting, so whether I do it on film with a million people seeing me or I do it in front of 20 people in a class showcasing my art, I am going to act whether anyone sees it or everyone sees it.
In 2009, Scott Rudin sent me August's [Wilson] original screenplay [Fences] and asked me what I wanted to do with it. He wanted to know if I wanted to act in it, direct it or produce it. I said, "Well, let me read it first."
I've always thought of acting as a tool to change society. I watch a lot of actors and I see panic in their eyes because they don't know why they act and I know why I act. Whether I'm a good or a bad actor, I know why I do it.
I was at a point of asking God whether acting was what He really wanted me to do. Oprah Winfrey came to one of my workshops, and a couple of months later, she reached out to Uncle BeBe, who co-wrote 'Born For This.' Oprah told him she was interested in me for the role of Charity on 'Greenleaf' and asked him to help her contact me.
I find that my entire life has come to me, and things happened without me planning them. You know, I never asked to photograph Princess Diana, and that made me more famous than I wanted. I never asked to photograph Madonna, and that pushed me to another level. There are things that just take you into the limelight.
But I sent letters to people in the music business. And one day I got a phone call from somebody and he asked me when I was born and where I was born. And, you know, three or four days later I got a call. Someone said, you know, Yoko Ono wanted to meet me in New York. I got on a plane. And the next day I was having coffee with John Lennon.
I would rather do a play because it's instantaneous. You go on the stage, and you know whether it's happening or not. Somebody asked me 'What is acting?' And I said, 'Acting is listening.' And if you ain't listening, nobody's listening.
I always liked acting in school and drama classes, but when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always told them I wanted to be a singer. I didn't want to be a jack of all trades. I wanted to master one.
Before acting, I wanted to become a journalist. I also toyed with the idea of being a chef - but that's only when people asked me what I wanted to be. In fact, I always used to say I wanted to be an actor, but I didn't ever believe that I was good enough to be come one.
I wanted something different; I wanted something that challenged me and that pushed me further. Then this idea of climbing Mount Everest came to my mind. It stuck in my head for days. Someone told me I couldn't do it, and that really annoyed me.
When eventually I started to act a bit more, I realised that circus school had taught me something that a lot of actors my age didn't have: physicality. They didn't know how to move. Acting is not all about talking. There is something animalistic about it.
Acting is something that I've done since I was so young. I always felt - certainly as a teenager - really cynical about acting. I definitely didn't feel like it was something I wanted to do, and so I really took it for granted.
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