Sarah Polley Quotes

Lately I did a film called All I Want for Christmas and it was well received. This gave me a new point of view and a new respect for my work as an actress.

Plus, doing a zombie movie is quite liberating. It's fun not to take myself seriously all the time.

So I decided to make a film about our need to tell stories, to own our stories, to understand them, and to have them heard.

My mom died of cancer when I was really young. I'm not someone who tries to work out their own stuff with a role, but I think that happened despite my best efforts to keep myself separate from it.

Well, because Dawn of the Dead can take place anywhere and it shows that actually the entire planet is contaminated, I would say that it shows the new face of our world - one person, one race, united against the invisible destructive force.

I just feel like it's so amazing every few years when I'm not making a film to act and basically go back to film school and just watch other filmmakers work and try to be a part of somebody else's vision. So I feel like you do use two very different parts of your brain, and it's great to be able to jump back and forth.

You seem restless, in a kind of permanent way.

AIDS is a global problem and there should be a global solution found by the entire international community. It is really scary to see and imagine our world fall into pieces because we refuse to share and put in the common vestiges of our civilizations.

I've always known that I've wanted to write, but I always saw myself doing that in the context of something other than film, so it was a really beautiful and kind of perfect moment in my life when I realized that I could combine this idea of wanting to write and tell my own stories with the environment I had grown up in and knew well - that I could make film as opposed to writing being a departure from what I knew.

It's been really important to me to create moments where there's a breath or moments where there's a laugh or moments where there's real life that's allowed to seep in through the cracks of whatever melodrama is happening, because that's what does happen in life.

It's amazing how the world does actually go on in the middle of things that should stop it for us.

The only disadvantage to directing if you've been an actor is how self-conscious you are. When I'm directing, I'm always so aware when I'm speaking to an actor of how easily I could throw them off by saying something careless or not being clear or concise. So it does make you watch your words in a way that sometimes is unhelpful.

I think that the idea of family is a very powerful and influential and disjointed thing that will always captivate me.

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.

I'm a control freak and I like to be overprepared, and I'm overly organized and I'm not in the moment a lot of the time.

In fact, there's an entire universe out there that's pretty much indifferent to struggles that big, no matter how serious they've been in your life.

There is no point trying to figure out who is guilty or not at un-balancing the planet. I think we need to figure out and solve the problems together and not isolate from each other.

I think it's a universal thing in every family, that people have their own specific versions of pivotal events or even small memories,

The ways in which people are damaged are the ways in which they're strong. It's what makes people interesting - what they've overcome and how, and what they haven't and how that's become a good thing. Almost everyone's life is both a gorgeous story and a tragedy. I think being alive is really, really hard, and I'm constantly stunned and amazed by people who make it interesting and beautiful.

I always look for an intense experience, an intense ride. There is nothing better than a good zombie movie where you run crazy and blow at monsters! It was a physical shoot and I enjoyed it.

Playing roles that are intense and damaged has always come more easily to me than doing comedies or lighter stuff - that would be taking a huge risk for me.

It's not that I don't want to become famous or that I'm obsessed by my work as an actress, but it's all about not limiting myself, such as putting myself in a little jail that I can escape from.

It's hard to give up that amount of control. It's scary to make yourself that vulnerable. Because you might do all kinds of things that are unplanned or are unexpected that maybe don't work, and you have to trust the director to see that and work around those things. I find it really scary.

Some of the funniest moments I've ever experienced have been in the midst of tragic situations in my life.

I think that we need to get along together if we want to survive in the twenty-first century.