Laura Linney Quotes

Where I did feel a difference is learning to just work in a different way so that your resources are not completely depleted so that you don't have anything to give to your child when you go home, and fortunately I've been working long enough that I know how to make that shift so that I don't compromise my work or compromise my relationships; not compromising parenting is really the biggest difference.

All the things that most kids hated, I loved. I loved that things were asked of me and that, much to my surprise, I was able to do them. I loved the 10 o'clock bedtime. I loved the responsibility.

When your life is being threatened there's an instinctive urge to fight. You fight for the time you have, for your relationships.

Fame didn't happen to me in my 20s, it has been a gradual thing which probably makes it easier to deal with.

That's my favorite food group: donut. I love the donut.

I just want to say, 'Go work! It doesn't matter what it is. Work begets work. Just go!'

I am very lucky, because for the most part people are very nice to me, and I am still able to go about my life and ride the subway and all that.

My castings sort of go in phases. There'll be several icy professional parts - a lawyer or a cop. And then there'll be the intelligent-but-wounded group and then the period things. It goes in sequence.

I find that things don't bother me as much. If I had a bad day on set, it sort of just rolls of my back in a way that it didn't before. So that's where the biggest difference is, stuff that used to get under my skin or that I would worry about or be anxious about just isn't a problem. So in some ways, having a child has been very liberating. I found it very liberating.

Some people's personalities are so compelling that they command attention.

The thing about death is that it's honest.

I get cold - really cold - when I travel.

If you have two parents who have to work, who want to work, you need to have someone to guide your child.

I think the way we talk about cancer has really evolved. I remember the way my grandmother used to talk about it, like a death sentence, no-one would even mention the word.

You have to relish the challenge of television.

Working with special needs children is hard.

We all have a limited amount and that it's a privilege to grow old. That's something that I think a lot of people have forgotten in this very fast-paced world where youth is overly celebrate.

I just have to concentrate on doing what I do.

Comedy is a way to make sense of chaos. It's a way of dealing with things that are overwhelming, that threaten you; it's a way to survive and get closer to the truth.

I'm lucky because I don't like being in the sun a whole lot, just because the repercussions for me - I feel it, I go very red.

Traits like humility, courage, and empathy are easily overlooked - but it's immensely important to find them in your closest relationships.

I could have gone to the gym for three hours a day and bought into all that, but I just wasn't interested.

It's always nice when you do something and it's well received as opposed to the other way which God knows happens to everybody. When the good times come around, you take a deep breath, appreciate it, but not take it too seriously.

I mean, the idea of losing a parent is really inconceivable. I think there's just an undertone of dread about the subject, so people don't talk about it and don't prepare for it.

For me to have the opportunity to stay with one character for, God willing, a long period of time, is really exciting.

Courtroom dramas can be boring.

Doing the right thing has power.

I tend to make low-budget movies but, yeah, I make more money than I ever thought I would make.

I think everyone's journey through this crazy, weird, wild, wonderful area of work named acting is really their own. And if you're going for something that isn't yours, you're wasting time. You could be focused on your own work instead of thinking about somebody else.

My parents were divorced and I would spend weekends with my father.

I hope that anyone I worked with wouldn't exploit our relationship.

I enjoy learning about different periods and people, and then taking what's universal about the human condition and seeing where it matches up. No matter where you are, certain things unite everybody.

I've always thought that I'm sexy in my own right, but not in a way that people thought was bankable.

The entertainment industry is terrified of silence.

I think everybody handles things very differently and you can conjecture, but until you're put in that situation, you really don't know.

I love to work in all sorts of different situations.

Ask "why" until there is no more "why."

You know when someone's over-flattering you in a way. You smile but you can't believe it.

The goal seems to me at times just to be business first.

You can watch someone on-stage cry and cry - but in the audience you feel nothing. It's easy to become indulgent. For me, what's important is the story first.

A magnetic personality doesn't necessarily indicate a good heart.

The (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) stories were great, for one. The thing that makes him a remarkable character is how he can withstand all of these different interpretations and different styles and, that's what makes a classic character a classic character; they keep coming back and you see them in a new way every time.

I can scarcely stand to have a manicure. I have to have them because you don't want to look like a disgusting human being - it's self-care and it has to happen, but I get very restless.

When you tell people, your world changes, your identity changes and people treat you differently. And then, not only do you have to deal with your own emotional response to what's going on, but you take on everybody else's emotional response.

What I love about a play is that it's such an investment because only time can create a lot of what happens onstage.

Cancer is so much bigger than a TV show.

I think everyone's experience with a terminal disease is so deeply personal and unique to the person, the context in which they're living and the relationships that they have.

Fear, anxiety and neurosis: that's just in the suitcase when you're an actor.

With big, emotional roles it's very easy, especially if you've grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character.

I grew up in Manhattan and, since my father was a playwright, all I ever wanted to be was a stage actress.

I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side.

The only really conscious decision I made was to cast my net wide and if the work was good, to do it.

At school I was always trying to con my teachers into letting me act out book reports instead of writing them.

Things get complicated at times, so there are certainly moments when you wish your life were different. That's true for everybody, not just people in our profession. But there's nothing I feel like I gave up professionally. I'm absolutely doing what I enjoy.

A lot of what is publicized now is really pretty trivial stuff - you know, what I eat for breakfast, where I have my pedicures, questions that I just cannot for the life of me understand why someone would want to know that.

I don't think you should exploit your own pain.

I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write. Language and punctuation is used specifically, and most of the time actors can find wonderful clues about character in the rhythm and cadence of the language used.

My experience is that's rare - that you have a script that is ... what they call 'film-ready.'

People's view of cancer will change when they have their own relationship with cancer, which everyone will, at some point.

I have an instinct to want to be part of a group of people. I feel safe there. That's why I was in school for so long.

Most scripts are written to be green lit. They're not written to be acted. And a lot of writers with the greatest intention in the world don't write for actors. They don't understand the architecture of what an actor needs to get from point A to point B.

It's very hard to put forth a film that's about love and the joy of love and for it not to be patronising and not make people nauseous or make them roll their eyes.

People can't really place me. They're not really sure who I am.

Just because you're not famous, doesn't mean you're not good.

I believe that no matter what you do in life, if you learn the basics through theater, it will help you in everything else - problem solving, communication, discipline, all of that stuff.

I'm not someone who likes to have my picture taken, let alone see it plastered all over the place.

Soon after I'd had my son I really wasn't planning on going back to work for a while. I will walk over hot coals to work with Bill Condon on anything, the experience that you have with him is just too good.I've certainly never worked with him before so the trio of Bill [Codon], Ian [ McKellen], and Sherlock Holmes, and England: it was too much to say "no" to.

I don't want to spend my life in my 40s feeling bad about being in my 40s, and then all of a sudden I'm 50, and I will have missed a whole decade!

I'm very hard on my bags because I tend to carry a lot of stuff with me.

I love actors, regardless of where they are in their skill level. There's something terribly satisfying about working with someone who's really learning.

Tanning is tricky, because a lot of people just look orange.

It is always good to explore the stuff you don't agree with, to try and understand a different lifestyle or foreign worldview. I like to be challenged in that way, and always end up learning something I didn't know.