Anjelica Huston Quotations

I have two new nephews and a new niece this year, so I have plenty of kids that I can spend time with.

I don't think it's necessarily healthy to go into relationships as a needy person. Better to go in with a full deck.

Where there is age there is evolution, where there is life there is growth.

I do like the ocean wave, actually. I'm born under the sign of Cancer - the sign of the crab - so I like coastal areas and sunny beaches and such - although not the wide-open and deep seas.

I've always thought with relationships, that it's more about what you bring to the table than what you're going to get from it. It's very nice if you sit down and the cake appears. But if you go to the table expecting cake, then it's not so good.

I'm very fond of doing movies where men fight over me. I don't get to do enough.

Oh, all kinds of lunacy happens in Ireland, all kinds of lunacy.

I know certainly, when one job draws to a close, that I feel I'm simply never going to work again. No one will ever want me for anything ever again. I think that's a vulnerable moment in every actor's life, and it happens every time you finish a film.

Some people had fathers who were bankers or farmers, my father made films, that's how I saw it. As for the movie stars, they were just around, some of them were friends, others weren't, it was all just a part of my everyday life.

I am a person whose father had no religion but who went to the nuns for a couple of years. And I think I'm the same: On one hand, I pray; on the other hand, I don't believe. I am constantly between the two.

Going back to Ireland involves at least six to seven emotional breakdowns for me per day.

I think all actors - they'll hate me for saying this - but we are babies. We like to be loved, and we'll do anything if we're loved.

I'm not really big on slapstick humor. I like gentle humor.

My biggest ambition is never to be bored. I'm not aggressive enough to strongly run after being an actress.

I had one nanny who made me sit in front of a bowl of porridge for three or four days running when I refused to eat it. I remember being very unhappy about that.

It was great to work in Ireland because it's such a beautiful country, but it's not particularly easy to film in because the weather changes all the time.

I don't see myself ever retiring, unless it's for something that I like better, and so far I like directing a lot but I don't see the necessity to retire from anything unless there's a really great alternative.

I like it when you read a script and there's the part that you show to the other characters and then there's the part that only the audience knows.

I think most actors like to be liked.

It's still possible to find pockets of old Dublin - but its becoming more and more rarified.

I'm not all that big on rides. I sort of like bumper cars but I don't really go to Disneyland all that much unless if have nieces and nephews or people to take.

Lots of women are working in the industry, and they're doing more directing with more coming up. I think it's all pretty good.

I was actually in my mid-30s when I got the Oscar. And yeah, it does kind of spoil you in terms of the kind of stuff you look for.

I don't think people have ever cast me for anything too traditional or midwestern or housewifey,

Of course drugs were fun.

My father was extremely loving to me and funny and wise and understanding, and at other times extremely demanding, critical, calculating, exacting. When you're a young woman, I think you want to please a lot, so maybe you accept more of the criticism than you would as an older person. But criticism can be very wounding. It certainly was to me.

Of course drugs were fun. And that's what's so stupid about anti-drug campaigns: they don't admit that. I can't say I feel particularly scarred or lessened by my experimentation with drugs. They've gotten a very bad name.

Age is not enviable in America. It's not applauded all that strongly. You have to take it all with a grain of salt.

If I were to have any sort of solid idea about which moments were God's manifestations, they would be those moments where one has practically nothing to do with what's going on. It's one of the best feelings in the world.

I get irritated when people counsel me on what I should do with my life, or tell me I should get married, or tell me what I should do. I think people have their role models for happiness and it helps if others fit into that.

I like things pretty close around me. I like to know that my house is safe, that the people and animals I love are well and happy. I like to feel as peaceful as possible.

I very much like doing voiceovers, and I also like doing readings. I do books on tape and stuff. I have fun with it.

An actor definitely has to be in the past a well as the present; an actor must react to past experiences every minute, every second.

People say, "Why is it that you love to act?" And you want to say, "Well, most of acting is sitting in your trailer, either bored or worried about the scene coming up." A lot of it is about things you don't really like, so it's a wonder why acting is such a huge draw, why everyone loves it so much.

The terrible thing about acting is the stops and starts.

Of wanting to pay my own way. I never asked my parents for money. I preferred to steal from my parents than ask them for money.

I'd always wanted to act, but it was a question of whether acting wanted me and whether the movies wanted me.

I have my television, my books and that becomes my little world.

Rather than go from one life to another, I think I live a lot of lives at the same time. I've done that ever since I was a child. It seemed that I was inhabited by some B movie.

The nature of acting is that one is many characters and jumps from one skin to another as a way of life. Sometimes it's hard to know exactly what all of your characters think at the same time. Sometimes one of my characters overrules one of my other characters. I'm trying to get them all to harmonize. It's a hell of a job. It's like driving a coach.

I don't have all that great an awareness of how people see me in life. I don't find myself thinking about it a lot.

It's certainly what I like best about getting older. You're not up for grabs for criticism anymore. You make a decision, it's made, it's fine, you don't have to go back and rework it. You don't have to apologize.

One of the difficulties of being a writer must be that you create drama that you can't live out. That's one of the wonderful things about acting.

Writing must certainly be one of the hardest professions - writing and painting.

I'm a collector - I collect everything. I can't throw things away. For some reason I think I'm going to need tiny wooden teddy bears with their arms hacked off.

I read much more that I do anything else. I don't watch too much television, because I like books.

The idea of being given things that you don't necessarily deserve was always a difficult one for me to negotiate, and so I really always felt that I had to prove myself. Being the daughter of a famous man I guess is more easy than being the daughter of a famous woman, but at the same time there was a sense of really, with me, of wanting to earn my own way.

Being called a person, as such, indicates that one should only have one character and be true to it.

What I like to think, and perhaps it is an adolescent thought, is that anything can happen. As long as you think that anything can happen, it will. We're all allowed to have our dreams.

It would probably be very sensible to be in love with someone who was not in the arts and who wasn't so prone to ups and downs. When I think of people who aren't in the arts, I immediately think of politicians for some reason, and I would never want to be with a politician.

I was always reticent about taking offerings from my father, and I think it was maybe because I felt the caveat was that I had to give something back, and I didn't like that position. But I've never felt incumbent on anyone to kind of keep them lifted or to support them, necessarily. I do that by wish or by option.

What you have to remember is that the great feelings come after the terrible ones.

Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking Program achieved for me a thing that I thought was not possible - to give up a thirty year smoking habit literally overnight. It was nothing short of a miracle.

I loved being blonde. It's true, they have more fun, even when they're cannibalising their children.

At a certain point you stop looking at your features, at what you don't look like. You start looking at lines and signs of fatigue rather than at the shape of your mouth.

There have been times when I wanted children and other times I've been grateful not to have them. I am a mess if I have to say goodbye to my dog for longer than five days. I don't know how I would deal with kissing my children as I left for work. I know there are women who are able to do that. I don't know if I could.

When my mother died, I was 17 years old, and I literally got on a plane and flew to America, and didn't really come back. I have been back to Ireland in short spurts, just skimming the surface of my formative years.

I've never been seasick. Carsick, but never seasick.

That's why actors can take on other lives, because I think basically, at the bottom of everything, they are terribly insecure people. They don't feel themselves to be bright and beautiful, or necessarily beloved. So they're always looking for it. And as long as they're looking for it, they work at their best capacity. So in that way, their insecurity feeds their talent.

There's always that question of what do you do first thing in the morning-hair and makeup or do you go and set up the shot. You can't be at all places at all times. So you have to try and not hold yourself hostage and be methodical about the work and hope that the weather gods will smile.

It's still possible to find pockets of old Dublin-but its becoming more and more rarified.

I'm not sad that I haven't had any children, because there are a lot in my family. My brother's children in their early twenties are great.

I do like the ocean wave, actually. I'm born under the sign of Cancer-the sign of the crab-so I like coastal areas and sunny beaches and such-although not the wide-open and deep seas.