Carla Gugino Quotations

My favorite thing is to have a big dinner with friends and talk about life.

I like being the lead but I like being in an ensemble. There are different challenges and dilemmas with both. If you're carrying a film, there's a certain weight, but there are a lot of scenes to explore the character. When you're in an ensemble, you have to convey the entire character in a limited number of scenes.

When a sports movie really works, it gets you on all levels, because the stakes are high. It's black and white. It's win or lose.

I'm a sensualist. My two main indulgences are dark chocolate and massages.

It's not often that the idea of continuing something for a potentially long period of time sounds exciting to me, because I really am a gypsy by nature.

Well, first of all, I'm an incredibly gullible person - I'm so bad that when I said that to someone, my friend said, 'You know, 'gullible' isn't even in the dictionary.' And I said, 'Really?' As I was saying 'Really?' I will acknowledge that I then realized what was happening, but that's how bad I am.

When my friends have a health concern, they call me. I've always been a vitamin taker. I also take digestive enzymes and antioxidants, and supplements that help with the thyroid and adrenals for my time-zone changes.

Unfortunately, 'chick flick' has become a term to describe most movies that I don't even like. They're these movies that, yes, have women in them but they really don't reflect who women are, and there's something kind of silly or shallow or gossipy about them.

I always feel like I want to work with people who raise my game, and I can do the same for them, and we can jump off the cliff together.

I feel like I'm the only person - or woman, at least - who hasn't read 'Fifty Shades of Grey.

I'll always take an artistic endeavor over a career move.

My father and my mother separated when I was two.

Sexuality is one of the biggest parts of who we are.

We are all multidimensional and kind of have dual personalities. Everyone puts on different roles depending on what circumstances they're in without even noticing that they do that.

One of the things I really love about TV is this symbiotic relationship you can get between the writers and the actors, and the characters start to come to life because you start to collaborate.

One of the most important things for an actor is to observe humanity.

I generally make a sort of playlist for my iPod for whatever project I'm doing.

I kind of knew it wasn't going to be until my 30s that I really hit my stride as an actor.

I think I'm always trying to subvert conventions, and sometimes it's more successful than others.

It is odd there are many movies with many men. But generally movies have one woman, or maybe the older woman and the younger girl.

Sucker Punch' is a big girl power movie.

You know, I used to be made fun of as a kid for being really articulate; it was sort of like a strange thing.

As an actor, you're naked emotionally; you're revealing yourself emotionally.

For me, I never, never, from the moment I started acting, had a desire to be famous.

I think the level of ambition of this piece is something that attracted all of us, ... doing something in a genre where you can deal with supernatural elements, but really see them through the human beings.

I think that there's a tendency for actors who play strong women to have them take on all the worst characteristics of men, to become cold and detached and hardened.

I think when I first started acting there were different people who I thought, 'I want that person's career or that person's career.' And as time has gone on, it's become really clear to me what is important to me; getting the best roles, the roles that I feel are challenging and scary and that I haven't done yet.

I think we are in a place now in our world where so much is going on, and so many things we never thought could happen are happening, so I found what I read here very relatable,

You just became the most important person on the planet.

Yeah, I guess I'm not a particularly religious person, but I do really believe strongly that we all need to believe in something, and that's very personal to each one of us.

What I've realized is that we're our own harshest critics. We give ourselves limitations. But I want to push through that wall, on a creative and personal level.

It was cool to play an empowered woman, one of the most important persons on the planet.

It's a really ambitious show and that to me is really exciting, ... It's something that really feels like its own, while paying homage to other things.

I'm really fascinated by someone who chooses worst-case scenarios as a profession. Someone who obviously thrives on crisis,

I really love pouring myself into a character for several months and leaving her, ... Pouring myself into someone for a long time is very intimidating to me,

I guess I've always been really attracted to period pieces and always felt visually I was probably more made for the '50s or the early '60s than I am for a modern day.

By the time I'm 80, I want to have played almost every role, ... For me, I always gravitate toward the opposite of what I've done. ... That comes from the inner desire to do more.

By the time I'm 80, I want to have played almost every role,

It's interesting how when you walk into a room in LA there's a sense of what you walk in, as is sort of what you can do. So I spent a lot of time choosing different things to hopefully show people that maybe that's not the case.

I do think that's one of the reasons that acting appealed to me so much: the idea of letting go of control in a controlled environment. Being able to go through the range of intense emotions and jump off the cliff, metaphorically, but in a creative way, and in a way where the structure was really solid.

I think maybe because I moved a lot in my childhood, I'm a little bit of a gypsy by nature.

I think that once somebody sees something, or feels it in the consciousness of society, it starts to allow change for other people.

I feel that's the richest gift that's ever been given to me: I get to do what I love. And it's a really brutal business, and no matter how successful you are you hear "No" more than "Yes."

There is something in these moments of crisis that is really extraordinary about humanity and human beings' resilience and the way in which everyone naturally comes together. I think you see the best in people in those moments for better or for worse and you find your best self.

I always think a good sports movie is emblematic in the same way that a great Greek tragedy really has a certain kind of structure, or a Shakespearean play if you're looking at a comedy or a tragedy, is that these are the heights and depths of human emotion.

I always wanted to be one of those people who were good at many, many things, but from a very early age, I fell in love with acting.

The interesting thing with acting, actually, is that you get to be so many different people that you get to do so much research on so many different things that I've learned so much about brain surgery and about astrophysicist-type of things and traveling to amazing parts of the world.

I started acting when I was 13, so acting has been, with great fortune, my job since I could get a job.

I find often in Hollywood there are many people who play themselves really beautifully. And certain parts are not that dissimilar from who you are as a person. And there are other parts where you would like to think that you have nothing in common with those characters, but you probably do have more than you think.

I don't have a favorite genre. I mean, I always sort of base it on instinct. And it does seem to be that after I finish something that is very dramatic, I end up inevitably wanting to do a comedy or something like that.

You can't not be happy around penguins. You're unfortunately happy and cold but the happiness makes up for the coldness.

My tendency as an actor is, when there's a certain energy, I feel a challenge to match it, to come up to that plate and play on the same level.

I think the scariest thing to me is to think that somebody would only associate me with one character and that that's all that I would get to play.

As a creative person, you need to sort of spread your wings and try different things out because each one really does inform the other.

I can pretty much take care of myself; I don't walk around with much fear.

I'm intrigued by films that have a singular vision behind them. A lot of studio movies have ten writers by the time they're done. You have a movie testing 200 times, making adjustments according to various people's opinions. It's difficult to have an undistilled vision.

I love doing serious movies for adults.

I have a very strong work ethic, and I'm very grateful for that. But I think there was a moment when I realized, "Oh, I can play a little as well."

She's a (lesbian), but with a body like that she could get any man she wants.

I'm fiercely protective of my privacy.

When my friends have a health concern, they call me. Ive always been a vitamin taker. I also take digestive enzymes and antioxidants, and supplements that help with the thyroid and adrenals for my time-zone changes.

Personally, just as an actor, I love accents; they're fun.

I was the person who did academics until the middle of the day, then went on auditions. I think there was a moment later in my life where I was like, "What am I doing? Why am I so serious?" .

I'm much more of a kid now than I was when I was a kid. I was the kind of kid who was valedictorian, a straight-A student. My mom used to say, "Please stop studying and get outside."

I always had challenges when I was younger, because I looked so young but sounded older.

I've joked that I would have either become schizophrenic or an actress, but as an actress you can do both.

What I love about him [Robert Rodriguez] is that he understands that actors are transformational. It's a natural instinct to ask people to do what you've seen them do before. Until you see someone do something new, you don't know what they can.

I'm a huge Wong Kar-Wai fan.

I think you always have to go as an artist with instinct, I really do.

I was a really, really serious kid. And a really kind of controlling kid. Like I had things that, now, people would say are like - there's a name for many disorders as we know - but I would say, "If I pick this rubber band, then this will happen." It was that kind of want to control things, which I think all kids have to some extent.

I played the mom in Spy Kids when I was, like, 27. So it was ridiculous. But [Robert Rodriguez] was like, "You know what? If we do our job right, no one will question it." And nobody did.