Laura Linney Quotations

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I can scarcely stand to have a manicure. I have to have them because you don't want to look like a disgusting human being - it's self-care and it has to happen, but I get very restless.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I crave a cone of silence every once in while.

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

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.

I find the whole disdain for ageing crazy.

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

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!

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.

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

I get cold - really cold - when I travel.

I had a good imagination and I still have one; a child-like imagination that hasn't gone away.

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.

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

I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side.

I'm lucky because I don't like being in the sun a whole lot, just because the repercussions for me - I feel it, I go very red.

Just because you're not famous, doesn't mean you're not good.

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.

A lot of what is publicized now is really pretty trivial stuff - you know, what I eat for breakfast, where I have my pedicures, questions that I just cannot for the life of me understand why someone would want to know that.

What I hope in my ideal world is that with each project, I'll either get to work with a really great script that would force me to grow, or work with a really great actor who will make me better.

All the things that most kids hated, I loved. I loved that things were asked of me and that, much to my surprise, I was able to do them. I loved the 10 o'clock bedtime. I loved the responsibility.

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

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.

Cancer is so much bigger than a TV show.

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

I've seen the greatest actors in the world, transcendent talents, who can't find a home.

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

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

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

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

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

I don't think I'm exactly gregarious, you know. I'm not usually known as the loud person in the room.

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

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

I have an instinct to want to be part of a group of people. I feel safe there. That's why I was in school for so long.

I just have to concentrate on doing what I do.

I just want to say, 'Go work! It doesn't matter what it is. Work begets work. Just go!'

I mean, the idea of losing a parent is really inconceivable. I think there's just an undertone of dread about the subject, so people don't talk about it and don't prepare for it.

I love to work in all sorts of different situations.

I tend to make low-budget movies but, yeah, I make more money than I ever thought I would make.

I'm noise-sensitive. It's always better for me if things are quiet, so I can concentrate.

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

I'm profoundly lucky. I really like it. I really like my work. I've liked it since I was 5 years old.

I'm sure my father had more to do with my career than I would like to give him credit for. I would love to think it was all me!

If you have two parents who have to work, who want to work, you need to have someone to guide your child.

My experience is that's rare - that you have a script that is... what they call 'film-ready.'

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

People can't really place me. They're not really sure who I am.

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.

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

The good thing is that I'm always honest.

The only really conscious decision I made was to cast my net wide and if the work was good, to do it.

The thing about death is that it's honest.

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

You have to relish the challenge of television.

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.

You can watch someone on-stage cry and cry - but in the audience you feel nothing. It's easy to become indulgent. For me, what's important is the story first.

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.

It's very hard to put forth a film that's about love and the joy of love and for it not to be patronising and not make people nauseous or make them roll their eyes.

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.

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.

If this movie threatens or challenges you, then there's something else you should look at. People are so scared to touch on these issues. The good thing about this movie is that it forces you to do that.

I have never been so impressed with anyone in rehearsal in my life as I was with her,

Fortunately, I'm in a perfect position for me. I'm able to work, have a wonderful time, and I'm not really a celebrity, and that's great.

He doesn't try too hard and, consequently, it's because he is knitted to the work, he knows what his job is and his job is really serving the material first.

I was curious about making this movie because the genres are put together, ... I'm attracted to stuff I think is going to be difficult to pull off, and the stuff that I'm a little afraid of.

Some of the best interviews are when it's with a creative peer,

I'm so surprised by the turnout today and a little overwhelmed, so thank you very much. How grateful we all are to be here and to thank you all for letting us invade your streets and film here. We know that at times it can be inconvenient to have a film crew come in to your neighborhoods and we just wanna say thank you.

We're living in a time when everyone is so certain ... to me, it's OK not to have the answers. The argument of the movie is, 'Is it possible?' And I did a lot of reading about these things and I don't know the answer. What do you do with objects moving in rooms? People speaking languages that they don't know? Animals appearing out of nowhere?

I've never been to Buffalo. And we're having a fantastic time here. I'm a little surprised by the turnout and a little overwhelmed. And thank you all so much. We know that at times it can be inconvenient to have a film crew come into your neighborhood. And we just want to say thank you.

A year ago, if someone told me I'd be getting this, I wouldn't believe it. This is a huge, huge thing for me. I just feel so damn good.

It is tough staying in touch with family and friends and trying to have a relationship, all of that stuff is hard. It takes a very special man to put up with it.

I've got my own demons to deal with.

I wanted to make sure that this movie would be balanced, that both sides of the argument would be fully represented. I wanted to make sure it wasn't going to be a movie that would tell people what to think. But just to think in general.

I'm forever saying to directors and screenwriters I've worked with, 'We don't need this part; let me act it.'

I found to my surprise that the man who was closest to him when he died had been a good friend to me in the last 10 years of his life. Yet after Delmore died, Milton never talked about him.

I hope it gets more people in to see the movie. For those who worked so hard and care about it so much, that's really the most important thing.

I tend not to think that way though I wish I could. There are certainly playwrights whose work I would like to have the opportunity to work on, such as O'Neil and Williams and to have the experience of having that repertoire, because I think every actor should have a go at that sort of stuff.

I don't know if I would call that singing,

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.

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

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.

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.

To be too knowing is a downfall.

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.

The entertainment industry is terrified of silence.

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.