Kathy Bates Quotations

I hope I look skinnier in 3D. I hope I don't look three times as fat. That'll be disappointing.

Alexander Payne's very specific. His scripts are always complete when you start working on them.

Drama comes more naturally to me. It's the comedy you really have to delve into.

The Oscar changed everything. Better salary, working with better people, better projects, more exposure, less privacy.

For a long time I did not want to do television because I did not want to get stuck playing the same person. I wanted the ongoing challenge of a variety of roles.

Jack made it very comfortable for me on the set. We'd met socially before but never worked together. You know, he's very professional, very disciplined and he's always prepared and knows his lines.

I want to be defined by my own essence.

After winning the Oscar, I was committed to do 'Fried Green Tomatoes,' but I didn't know what the next thing would be after that. It was a scary time. But the advantage of TV is the regular work. All you need is a hit series, I guess.

I have to pay the bills just like everybody else, but it also pays my soul to work.

I look for a role that hopefully I feel empathy with and that I can understand and love, but also that has that challenge for me to play - a different kind of role, a different type of character, a different time period.

I went from years of honing my craft to sudden recognition. It was quite a life changer.

I have always had a problem with my weight.

And people are always saying: 'Well, you go to Hollywood and you get yourself a film career or a TV series, and then you can do anything you want. Because then you've got the clout.' That had always sounded like a lot of hooey to me, but now I think it's true, unfortunately.

It was also wonderful to have the prospect of playing with Jack Nicholson. It was a terrific part, a terrific script, with Alexander Payne and Jack Nicholson. You can't get any better than that!

Every time an Oscar is given out, an agent gets his wings.

I try to always stretch myself to fit the characters that have been presented.

The roles I was lucky enough to get were real stretches for me: usually a character who was older, or a little weird, or whatever. And it was hard, not just for the lack of work but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.

I haven't talked much about being an ovarian cancer survivor because I don't really want to define myself that way.

I think that being in an environment is a much richer experience than just working on a soundstage.

I'm not that conservative. I do feel - I guess I'm more of a Democrat at heart, although I've never affiliated myself with a particular party.

I'm very lucky to be able to do what I love to do, and I hope I can keep doing it for a while.

I was never an ingenue. I've always just been a character actor. When I was younger, it was a real problem, because I was never pretty enough. It was hard, not just for the lack of work, but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.

My mother used to tell this corny story about how the doctor smacked me on the behind when I was born and I thought it was applause, and I have been looking for it ever since.

I am a very private person, ... Not shy exactly, but it takes me a very long time to make friends. I still have such a hard time navigating the waters out here.

I think it's the best thing for them, playing in honor of Brad, and I think they are focused completely on the game at this point that they do him proud. He would be upset if they didn't.

what informs her, both as an actress and as a director, is that she's a keen observer of the human condition.

We need to let black America know, we do want you, but we want you on the terms of the United States of America, ... And we want you to be full and complete human beings.

There's only maybe two pages in Jane's book that deals with the marriage because she was really talking only about her becoming an EMT and going through this midlife crisis, ... So when Alan Hines wrote the screenplay, he sat down with Michael Stern and really got down to the bottom of what was going on in that relationship. The work was there in the script.

They sent the material to me as an actress, ... I liked it so much, and I identified with the character and the script so much, I thought: I don't want anybody else telling me what to do, so can I please direct this?

A lot of Jane's fears are based in her fear of being exposed, ... Because once phobias are exposed, you feel compelled to deal with them. And who wants to do that?

For me as a director, it was important to create this couple as truthfully as I possibly could. Because as she's becoming more comfortable with her new life and her newfound freedom, their professional life is falling apart.

It's the game Brad loved, and he would have wanted us to play.

I felt so strongly about the script and related to Jane's story so much that I had to do the movie,

There are a lot of powerful women in Hollywood who have been movie stars for a long time who are getting into their forties and fifties. I still want to see them work.

Because I'm a woman, because I'm a character actress, because I'm over 40, I'll be very interested to see, not just for me but for other actresses, how Hollywood treats us in the next ten, fifteen years. I'm hoping that it's not going to be so easy to shove people under the rug, as they have in the past.

The problem I have these days is that women are often cast in a role - as a police officer, for example - and then are invariably perceived by the other characters as succeeding in a man's job, as if they're doing it in spite of being women.

The thing that I've run up against is that it's always been an either-or proposition, especially in Hollywood. You're either young and glamorous and you're going to get the lead and get the man at the end of the picture, or it's the opposite: you're a character actress, you're not attractive enough for the other role, and so you're playing the friend or the killer or the lesbian or the doctor or whatever.

I want to see women onscreen the way I see them in society.

I'm not a stunning woman.

O.K., we had women's lib in the '60s, the women fought for their roles, they're out there in the work force. Now let's talk about how they're dealing with things as human beings.

I find that I'm fighting to keep my energy and my passion centered on the work and not on "Will this get me an Oscar?" - which is the way people are starting to talk to me. I'm not interested in the way people are starting to talk to me. I'm not interested in looking at a role that way. That's not what I ever did, and it's not how I can continue to do my work.

I didn't go out on one date in high school. I played guitar and sang and wrote my own music and poetry and stuff when I was a teenager.

Now if I go through it again, I think I would be a lot more open about it. I admire people who have been open like Melissa Ethridge and women I see walking around facing it without wigs and all of that stuff. I think I would be more courageous next time.

I find it safer to pursue the powerful, the ugly, the unpleasant.

We all love to hear a good story. We save our stories in books. We save our books in libraries. Libraries are the storyhouses full of all those stories and secrets.

I can sit here on the couch and hear you say, "You're very feminine and very attractive," but I have always struggled with that.

I've always tried to be honest, and it would be too difficult for me to develop some kind of persona. I don't have enough time or energy for that.

I see my sisters, my mother, my grandmother. I like the way I look. I think I have a nice face. I like my eyes, my mouth. I have a good nose. I have good skin.

The bottom line is that I'm an actor, so when somebody pitches me a great part, it's a no-brainer. You never know what it's gonna be like, in terms of the actual experience. You can be really excited about a part that can turn out shitty, you can have a bad time, there's a bad egg or two or three, in the bunch, or the producers are weird, or something like that.

The relationship to the director is becoming more crucial to me, making sure there are some common goals. I haven't been in the kind of position where my roles have been chosen for me, where someone says, "First we'll do this and then we'll do this," and it's all part of some master plan.

A heart can only discover what it really wants with experience.