Emily Mortimer Quotes

I'm always sort of anticipating life being difficult, but on a basic level, that's sort of on the surface, on a basic level, I'm optimistic in the sense that I think it's all going to be alright in the end.

I have to say that, though it sounds so superficial, the accent really does help. I like having accents preparing for a part.

I want any excuse to come home. My dad is not a spring chicken any more. If anyone says, 'Go buy a postage stamp in London,' I'll go and do it.

Every time you start a new job, you're starting from the beginning again and it's terrifying. And you feel like you're going to be fired and told to go home and never to darken the doors of these people ever again.

I've only half-admitted I'm a professional. I know I am, I've paid my dues, but one of the things I could do better when I'm acting is to really be rigorous and to think I know how to do it. To use my brain.

I think we probably will end up in America because he would be giving up much more to come and live here. If you want to work in film, that's really where you have to be. But I'm not sure that being an ex-pat is very good for one's sense of self.

You don't have to be brilliant at everything. You just have to have the courage to put yourself in the line of fire.

Some people come alive at night. I'm hopeless by 9 p.m. Coffee and Cadbury buy me an extra half hour. Often I can't get my clothes off I'm so far gone.

I had watched Alfie, but I didn't consider it a prerequisite. Michael Caine was just extremely fabulous. He's one of the most professional actors I've ever worked with. I guess after a lifetime of doing it, you know what you're doing. He's incredibly uncomplaining, undemanding.

I like to mix it up, yeah. I don't sort of think, 'Oh, I need to do a comedy, I've done three dramas this year.' I don't think of it like that, but I definitely from project to project I feel like I want to just do something different all of the time and stop, I don't want to bore myself or anyone else.

It's very difficult to find the time or the money for people to organize rehearsals for some movies. It staggers me how little preparation often goes into these scenes which are difficult and complicated. You think, "God, it's crazy. I've never met this person before and here I am having to work at how to do a whole performance on the set." It was great to have a few days of just talking to Michael [Caine]and Daniel [Barber] and thinking about the characters and the relationship between them before we started shooting.

I was determined not to become an American citizen but I did it for completely cynical reasons: to avoid paying inheritance tax in the U.S.

New York is great, but I miss L.A. - I feel like there was something exotic about L.A. that I kind of underestimated at the time. It was very unfamiliar to me.

'Leonie' did get made and it was an extremely wonderful experience. I got to travel the world. I filmed for 6 months - 3 months in New Orleans and 3 months in Japan.

You are exposing yourself all the time as an actor. There's the risk of being thought of as bad or boring or unattractive.

I guess secrets are part of the fabric of everybody's lives. I mean everybody's lives, and guilt is part of the fabric of everybody's lives.

I was terribly shy when I was growing up, I really wasn't confident with other people and I think I was always afraid of up or not being this very cool, amazing person that I wanted to be.

I'm trying to avoid, you know, guilt, even though before the child is born, you're already thinking you're doing things wrong ... Why do I think that will probably carry over until the day you die?

Doing press is like eating at McDonald's: while it's going on it's vaguely enjoyable - you're seduced by your own vanity and taking yourself rather seriously - but immediately afterwards you feel sick.

51st State was one that I loved doing because the character was so out there, and in a way I was sad to leave the character behind. I'm afraid I could never be that cool in real life!

But I have to grow out of it, because it's very boring, really. Even when you're telling people how crap you are, you're still banging on about yourself.

When I'm panicked about my love handles, I go to the YMCA and get obsessed with Kid Rock videos as I'm on the running machine.

The odd thing is if you asked me to do the accent now I would find it very difficult unless I was also playing that part, because I associate it so much with entering into the role and stepping into someone else's shoes.

I went to dinner with my mother-in-law and I just realized I was talking in sound bites to her and expecting her to laugh every time I said anything or be jotting something down in a notebook. So you have to kind of really have a talk with yourself after you've done a press tour and say, 'Chill out!'

The thing I miss about L.A. is time. I feel like I had much more time there, partly because no one is ever really doing anything.

I never felt I was quite the ticket academically. I always felt I had to put in an enormous amount of effort not to be disappointing. So I worked really hard, but at the time it suited me, because I didn't do very much else.

Despite being extremely professional, Michael Caine has a giggle which was lethal for me because once you catch his eyes, once you realize the other person is a giggler too, it's curtains.

I am a good mother and I feel proud about it.

I already feel a bit annoyed at myself for writing screenplays. It's a bit, I don't know, model-singer-dancer-actress that went to a posh school. There's something too weirdly predictable about it.

I wake up early. At 6:30 A.M., I'm at my most optimistic.

It is brilliant going to the theatre and being forced to sit and listen and think about life. It can be almost a near-religious experience.

I must have been a really pretentious little girl.

It's a hard thing to do, to be given a script, and know that you've got to turn up on the first day of the shoot - generally without having had any rehearsal - and present a character. It's really baffling; it's incredibly hard to know how to begin, to approach it, other than just thinking about it.

I think that you can get more passionate about somebody the longer you're with them and the more you know them and the more you go through together. Being married is definitely better than it's cracked up to be I think.

I'd been shy since childhood, constantly full of self-doubt. And as an actor, I'd been so scared of failing that I made my career - and myself - a big joke.

There were moments where I was being kicked in the stomach, and even though I had this brace on to protect me, I still had to prepare myself for it . You can't be relaxed when that's happening. You have to brace your muscles. I can remember thinking as it was about to happen "Wasn't that how Houdini died?" I think it was.