Mira Sorvino Quotations

My father taught me how to substitute realities.

I try to become more humble and more myself with every year. There was a while when I got famous where I was so confused and my head was spinning.

I hope that doing truthful portrayals of people in a variety of circumstances gives people a kind of subterranean link to those characters.

I want my life to effect the balance to the positive.

I have learned to pare down what I do and still be effective and strong in a role.

I assume that if people get to know me, they'll like me. If they don't, it's not my problem.

The Oscars have become such a big deal these days that it's just used as adjective.

It's the relationships between people that are more important than the sort of far away fantasies of what the good life is, the world of supermodels and Bud ads.

I had a Christian upbringing - it was all about sin and guilt. I was very happy just kissing people. I was like the make-out queen - not even second base.

Now that I've got some films under my belt, I have the courage of my convictions regarding acting. It gives me a leg to stand on.

My major in college was Chinese Studies. It was very intentional.

The name game is frustrating. Agents will say, They love you, but they're going to offer it to Julia Roberts first.

There was something about being in front of audiences when I was in elementary school plays that gave me a thrill. It was like the rush you get from a roller coaster drop.

I always feel I can play a role - just give me the time to do the preparation and I'll be it.

Acting is doing, because everything you say or do is some kind of an action, some kind of a verb. You're always connected to the other person through some kind of action.

I'm doing things that are more artistic again, more close to the material that I love. I don't disparage those things that I did. They're just not as much reflective of who I am.

I hate it when people use sex as a weapon against the people who are engaging in it. It's so hypocritical.

We all struggle with our failure to communicate and our failure to reach beyond fear to love people.

I'll talk to myself out loud a lot.

Once you've found something you know how to do, it makes you feel you don't have to be intimidated by someone.

I take the responsibility of choosing seriously because it becomes an indelible part of your body of work. Something has to sing to me.

I wanted to do something far from my intellectual and physical home, so I went to live in Beijing for eight months and took Mandarin Chinese.

Sometimes I feel limited by people's perceptions of what I can and cannot do, or what I do or don't look like.

There are all kinds of other things I could do, things I would probably like, but only acting would give me emotional fulfillment.

I (didn't) want to feel embarrassed doing this really zany character.

I was offered one of the roles in a big project that shall remain nameless. I thought the whole thing encouraged violent sex crimes toward women. It made horrible, ghastly rape violence seem sexy. I just didn't want to sign my name to it.

We felt she should have her own history of sexual abuse . . . which makes her feel very deeply about what she is doing, because she's having to look backward into her own vulnerability as well as using all her training and strength,

We're going to be a family of four.

These are women who are beaten, raped, sold . . . mentally dominated, threatened that their families will be destroyed, ... They have no other options.

The way that trafficking is stopped is just ordinary people become aware of it and they see something awry and then call in a tip, ... And until people can fathom that their next-door neighbor might have a slave in their house, they're not going to see the signs and think to call the police.

They used to take important social topics and sort of sex them up to make people want to watch them, and I think that this film handles it with the gravitas that it deserves,

There was a sort of diagram. Everything else that was said was really stuff that came out of our own heads.

There's a side of my personality that goes completely against the East Coast educated person and wants to be a pin-up girl in garages across America...there's a side that wants to wear the pink angora bikini!

Being is like pretending.

When I was 5, my mother threw a party, and a friend and I wrote and performed a play called The Dutch Doll.

Acting is what happens on the way.

There's a side of my personality that goes completely against the educated & serious woman. The side who wants to be a pin-up girl in garages all across America!

[My choice about scripts] is just a question of what I fall in love with. You have to use some kind of instinct meter about it. I think I'm getting closer to my instincts now. I don't think there needs to be a plan. I think there needs to be love. I think you need to love what you're doing and then the rest is anybody's guess.

As a youth, I hated myself for not being good enough. All my inadequacies and failures, not being kind enough, generous or understanding enough, would assail me at night. It became a habit to be guilty and self castigating, not liking myself because I was unworthy... I really tortured myself.

I could have seen myself going into academia, but I don't love it; I just like it.

I had started off, before I ever got an acting job, working at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions as a reader. I was always interested in that side of the camera.

You know how in high school you do these plays and people come up after the show and they're really excited for you? Well, that's what's happening to me right now.

I have to be able to shake my imaginary life from my real life when I walk through the door with my children who immediately need a lot from me. It's actually kind of a relief, especially if it was a dark day on set.

I have a hard time getting motivated to do something that seems like a career move. I've gotten into vague trouble with my agents for turning down work that I thought was exploitative.

One of the hugest ways that will make an impact, which is only in its infancy right now, is corporate accountability. Consumers at the buying point saying, 'Can you certify to me that this product is slavery-free?' And most cannot right now.

I had been looking for a New York apartment, but I said, Why not give LA a go?

Primary and especially secondary education is extremely important in preventing trafficking, it allows children to develop critical thinking skills to be able to defend themselves from traffickers and to have the skills that will enable them to have gainful employment to be able to support their families in other ways than being sexually exploited.

More is spent in a single month [in the U.S.] fighting the war on drugs than all monies ever expended domestically or internationally fighting slavery from its inception. Per month, we spend more on the drug war than we ever have trying to free slaves.

That's the thing about acting - it does have the feeling of downhill skiing. When it's really all going right, you know your lines, you know what's important to your character, you pick the strongest reactions possible to elements in the story. But then you let it all go and you're in the moment and stuff happens. It surprises you and it's super strong; it's like you're living life in a slightly heightened way in the time between "action" and "cut."

No, this is not what a fair God would do. And why does it not say anywhere in the Bible that slavery is wrong? It only says that you should treat your slaves well. Well, I don't care if you treat them well. How is it possible that it is not immoral to own another person? Why isn't that one of the Ten Commandments? 'Thou shalt not own another person.' You want to sit here and tell me that fornication is worse than owning someone?