Laura Linney quotes

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Trying #Way #Different

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Crazy #Journey #Thinking

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

#Courage #Humility #Empathy

I'm always curious, but I'm learning things I never thought I'd learn. I get to travel to places I never thought I'd go.
-- Laura Linney

#Curious

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Intelligent #Casting #Groups

I love to work in all sorts of different situations. I think you learn a lot, which is why I try not to approach something the same way, because it might not be appropriate, and then you can get lazy just out of boredom. So I love any approach.
-- Laura Linney

#Thinking #Boredom #Lazy

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Communication #Believe #Discipline

When you're dying, you're liberated to do what you want to do. You give yourself permission. 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.
-- Laura Linney

#Unique #Thinking #Giving

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

#Cancer #Views #People

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

#Thinking #Conjecture #Situation

Doing the right thing has power.
-- Laura Linney

#Doing The Right Thing #Right Thing

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Emotional #People #Identity

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Character #Writing #Cadence

The thing about death is that it's honest. I go to things that have a core of honesty about them and there's nothing more honest than death.
-- Laura Linney

#Honesty #Honest

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

#Bags #Stuff

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Character #Style #Different

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Children #Bad Day #Differences

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Children #Home #Differences

I know what people want to hear is the connection with the son, Roger, when you have a child. I would love to tell that there was an epiphany as to what it is to be a mom, but I didn't feel any difference there.
-- Laura Linney

#Mom #Children #Son

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

#Groups #Favorite Foods #My Favorite

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Son #Hot #Coal

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.
-- Laura Linney

#People #Wish #Different

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

#Play #Investment

The basic laws of good acting are the same, but everything about the experience is different-your job responsibility, the time you spend on it.
-- Laura Linney

#Jobs #Responsibility #Law

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.
-- Laura Linney

#People #Different #Matter

Cancer is so much bigger than a TV show.
-- Laura Linney

#Cancer #Tv Shows #Tvs

Courtroom dramas can be boring.
-- Laura Linney

#Drama #Boring #Courtroom

I crave a cone of silence every once in while.
-- Laura Linney

#Silence #Cones

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

#Fame #Easier #Deals

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

#Teacher #Book #Writing

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

#Sexy #People #Way

What I find so interesting about people is the choices they make, and how that effects their behavior, their sense of self and their relationships.
-- Laura Linney

#Self #People #Interesting

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!
-- Laura Linney

#Feelings #Want #Feeling Bad

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Nice #Appreciate #Way

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

#Heart #Personality #Good Heart

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

#Fighting #Life Is

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Way #Comedy #Chaos

I have a bag with a toothbrush and toothpaste and all the things I might need during the day. I call the bag my trailer. Sometimes you don't have a trailer, so that's my trailer.
-- Laura Linney

#Might #Needs #Bags

To be too knowing is a downfall.
-- Laura Linney

#Knowing #Downfall

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

#Goal #Firsts

I love working closely with people.
-- Laura Linney

#People

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

#Our Relationship

I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side.
-- Laura Linney

#Upper East Side #Manhattan #Sides

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

#Father #Actresses #Manhattan

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

#Anxiety #Actors #Neurosis

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

#Character #Opportunity #Long

History's a resource.
-- Laura Linney

#Resources

I always laugh to myself when I listen to some really big A-list star saying that they are just a normal person.
-- Laura Linney

#Stars #Laughing #Lists

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Nice #People #Lucky

I certainly didn't have a nanny.
-- Laura Linney

#Nannies

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

#Pain #Thinking #Should

My parents were divorced and I didn't grow up with my father, but I spent a lot of time around him, and his influence on me has been profound.
-- Laura Linney

#Growing Up #Father #Profound

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

#Three #Gone #Hours

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Thinking #People #Age

I don't consider myself a celebrity, and I don't consider myself a star.
-- Laura Linney

#Stars

My family is from the South, and I can remember all those ladies I grew up with, like my great-aunts, who had handkerchiefs. There's something sweet about them.
-- Laura Linney

#Sweet #Aunt #Remember

But I've also spread my net very wide. If there's one thing that I've done on purpose it's to take whatever job, so long as it's interesting and challenging, whether it's theatre, radio, TV or film.
-- Laura Linney

#Jobs #Interesting #Long

I had learning disabilities, and I couldn't express myself in the written word,
-- Laura Linney

#Disability #Learning Disability #Written Word

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

#Orange #People #Looks

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

#Smile #Believe #Way

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Pain #Character #School

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

#Father #Weekend #Parent

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.
-- Laura Linney

#Cancer #Grandmother #Thinking

People can't really place me. They're not really sure who I am. Sometimes they think I'm Helen Hunt. Sometimes they think I'm Laura Dern.
-- Laura Linney

#Thinking #Who I Am #People

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

#People #Personality #Attention

What people can survive and what they don't survive is shocking to me. Someone can go to Iraq and be blown to bits and survive. Someone can trip and fall on the street and they die - that's that.
-- Laura Linney

#Fall #Iraq #People

The entertainment industry is terrified of silence.
-- Laura Linney

#Silence #Entertainment #Entertainment Industry

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

#Taken #Likes