Romola Quotes

I think it is kind of important to direct someone so the character is appealing, but, as an actress, I find it frustrating because I think, "Why do I have to be more likable than a man would have to be saying the same line?" ~ Romola Garai

I was mad until I was about 25. Completely out of control with my emotions. Everything that happened to me was a tragedy. I've been much happier over 25. ~ Romola Garai

Our conception of 1950s underwear is a lovely vintage aesthetic, but actually, wearing stockings with no elastic and a girdle was heavy duty. ~ Romola Garai

If you read reviews that you think by their very nature are not respectful of the actresses involved or not appreciating the work as it should be, I think you should write to reviewers or comment and say, "Are you kidding me?" ~ Romola Garai

I read the paper pretty much every day, as well as getting news from the Internet and on TV. But I don't do social media at all; I'm a Luddite from that point of view. ~ Romola Garai

The language of freedom-fighting was so co-opted by the baby boomers in order to express their now-hopelessly compromised ideologies that no other generation could emulate it without a smirk. This has created an apathetic generation in the West, with young people no longer distinguishing between the old order and the new. ~ Romola Garai

I don't really want to play parts that I think are not fully developed or fleshed out, especially with female roles. ~ Romola Garai

His faith wavered, but not his speech: it is the lot of every man who has to speak for the satisfaction of the crowd, that he must often speak in virtue of yesterday's faith, hoping it will come back to-morrow. ~ George Eliot

There was quite a lot of lying around in fields at Stonar, a small independent girls' school in the country near Bath. It was a non-selective school and the right environment for me: academically not particularly pushy. ~ Romola Garai

I think it's very repressive for a woman to be constantly told that she has to make films about women to better represent women, but then the reverse is not found. ~ Romola Garai

I've always scribbled, and I still do it. I've written numerous scripts for films for which I think I'd be perfect as the complex, intelligent and, yes, modern heroine. Embarrassingly bad, all of them. I've had to come to terms with the fact that I'm not a writer. ~ Romola Garai

I would argue that something dark is lurking between the sexes, and that it is seeping out into cinema. ~ Romola Garai

I wish I was a more adventurous person in a way. But actually, security is a really big deal for me. ~ Romola Garai

We live in a society where children are expected to become adults overnight. ~ Romola Garai

I'd always try to get a C, maybe a B. Other girls would trot off a brilliant essay and go off to Oxford; I'd think: 'Where is the justice?' I took A-levels in English, history and theatre studies and got three Bs. ~ Romola Garai

If you are a 19-year-old woman, there are very specific things that directors and the people in positions of power in the industry - who tend to be older men - are going to want you to be and do. They are not going to want some chatty, difficult, slightly spoilt girl. ~ Romola Garai

I think with the best actors, emotion is something that has no kind of check in them. ~ Romola Garai

A passion for any novel, and any character, can crystallise your ideas when you really need to be as open as possible as a performer. ~ Romola Garai

I'd actually really love to review books and films and plays, but you can't be an artist and a critic. I would love it if I could. ~ Romola Garai

I get grumpy about the innate conservatism of our tastes; I love bold theatre, and I get annoyed when a heritage piece is really successful. ~ Romola Garai

I love '30 Rock.' Absolutely love it. It's a game-changing show. ~ Romola Garai

I would love to live free of the fear and sadness and real desperation that I think the effect of childbirth has on women, especially because we are expected to be so concerned by 'recovery' from childbirth. ~ Romola Garai

Female ambition is such a complicated thing to play because it is an aggressive quality, and people respond very badly to women exhibiting any kind of aggression. ~ Romola Garai

I'm fundamentally a busy person; I spend my time doing useful things and profoundly useless things! ~ Romola Garai

Films about women and their concerns are seen as frivolous, limited and, most damaging of all, niche. ~ Romola Garai

Increasingly, it's actresses doing the big fashion advertising campaigns, and now there's no distinction between actresses and models. ~ Romola Garai

Motherhood so often comes in conflict with women's capacity to express and live their own lives. ~ Romola Garai

The advent of digitally enhancing images - and the fact that actresses weren't protesting against that - created an environment where big corporations felt like they had total ownership over the bodies of actresses. ~ Romola Garai

You don't have to conform to a very specific aesthetic today, whereas 1950s women definitely had to. ~ Romola Garai

Acting is a strange job because your control is very limited. ~ Romola Garai

I have always been interested in gender politics, so I'm not that keen on doing things that don't represent a truth about women. ~ Romola Garai

Postwar Europe was morally stagnant, and there was a lot of neo-conservatism. ~ Romola Garai

I was brought up with a very strong sense of what can happen if your society starts to chip away at the small victories women have won for themselves. ~ Romola Garai

If you're going to make great art, you have to make it at a huge cost - you have to be prepared to sacrifice what other people think of you, other people's opinions, and you have to make personal sacrifices. ~ Romola Garai

I don't really want to do things that I feel like are going to send out a message that I don't really want to sign up for. ~ Romola Garai

When you talk to women who were working as print journalists or in broadcasting in the '50s, and then you talk to women who were working in the late '60s, there's an enormous difference. There had already been a huge transition. Then, of course, you get well into the '70s and there were women with children working. ~ Romola Garai

There are still journalists who risk their lives in situations of conflict, versus those who sit behind a desk at 'News of the World' to report on whether someone is going out with somebody or not. ~ Romola Garai

I want people to think I'm sexy, but to know also that I've got an ordinary body and not feel intimidated. ~ Romola Garai

Normally, when you're working on something, there are other characters that you have alliances with, and you have unified goals with some characters. ~ Romola Garai

I am always naturally drawn to heroines that have human flaws because I enjoy people that have lived their life with courage and make big successes and big failures. ~ Romola Garai

There are American directors I'd really like to work with, but I don't know how much I want to be sitting in my house, doing the rounds of meetings with CEOs. You have to be really hardworking to do all that, and I'm lazy. ~ Romola Garai

I have a very strong, probably slightly aggressive personality, and so that just ends up coming out regardless of what I try to do. ~ Romola Garai

I'm an actor. And like a lot of actors, it's very important that everybody loves you all the time. ~ Romola Garai

There's nothing very interesting about my life. ~ Romola Garai

I love my home, spend as much time in London as I can, and try wherever possible to avoid travelling for work. Sometimes I think I'm really badly equipped to be an actress. ~ Romola Garai

I wouldn't want to direct - I think that's a very different job. You have to be a very specific type of person to do that. ~ Romola Garai

When you're on stage, you build strong relationships with the actors, but it's a story you tell with the audience - you have to include them, you have to respond to them, they have to understand the narrative. ~ Romola Garai

If I have to spend prolonged periods of time in a trailer, I go mad. Stuck in a metal box doing nothing, I lie there paralysed with boredom. ~ Romola Garai

The worst thing you can do as a performer is to judge your character in any way, positively or negatively. ~ Romola Garai

I try not to live in the future too much; that can make you crazy as an actor. There are so many people who are obsessed about their career path, like it's something which you can control, which fundamentally you can't. ~ Romola Garai

Women don't question themselves when they enter into a story that has male characters, but men do question the validity of a female narrative. ~ Romola Garai

If you have the opportunity as an actor to control your career in any way, then you've won the jackpot. ~ Romola Garai

There's no way I could ring up a company that was lending me a red-carpet dress and say, 'Do you have it in a 10?' Because all the press samples are an 8 - I would say a 'small 8.' ~ Romola Garai

Nowadays, most women just assume they have a right to be in the workplace, and any kind of discrimination they suffer is sort of more creeping. ~ Romola Garai

I think I was quite lucky in that I went to an all-girls school. I was never put in an environment where I had to be the other - the woman as opposed to the man - all the way through my education. I was never made to feel that way at home. ~ Romola Garai