I think that ageism is a cultural illness; it's not a personal illness.
— Frances McDormand
Guess what? I am an ordinary person.
I have a very short attention span.
I am not a director or a writer, but a filmmaker.
It's kind of a subversive act to tell a story of a woman past a certain age, to develop a four-hour movie based on a marriage and a story of two people past middle age.
A 90-minute time frame is not long enough to tell a good female story, and that's why long-format television has become so great for female storytelling and for female performers and directors and writers.
I think awards are good for the movie. They can bring a new audience to the movie. I've always claimed that things like that don't get you work. Work gets you work. That's my blue-collar, protestant work ethic.
I went to high school in a steel town in Pennsylvania.
My politics are private, but many of my feminist politics cross over into my professional life.
All the skills of housewifery are the ones I'm using as a producer.
I have not mutated myself in any way.
Adulthood is not a goal. It's not seen as a gift.
Something happened culturally: No one is supposed to age past 45 - sartorially, cosmetically, attitudinally.
The crew on 'Three Bilboards,' by the way, is one of the best I've ever worked with. And that's not hyperbole.
I became interested in educating people in the variety of ways in which women can express their emotion. Which is much easier to do in a large role than in a supporting role to a male protagonist. In general, the women in a supporting role to a male protagonist - cry a lot.
I was completely naive about the business of being an actor. My family didn't go to the theater or to the movies. We watched television like every 1960s small-town American family, and I certainly never thought about being on TV. I thought I was going to be a classical actor in the grand tradition.
Because of my own insecurities about the way I look, I do sometimes sabotage the looks of my characters by making them as homely as possible. I've never done a glamour part. I'd like to some day, though I don't know if I could pull it off.
In comparison to other women in the world, perhaps I'm seen as smaller. But I've never had a problem thinking of myself as a large woman.
I was often told that I wasn't a thing. 'She's not pretty enough. She's not tall enough. She's not thin enough. She's not fat enough.' I thought, 'O.K., someday you're going to be looking for someone not, not, not, not, and there I'll be.'
I buy books, I have shelves of books. I love to read.
With aging, you earn the right to be loyal to yourself.
Unless I'm on a stage, I don't want to be the event in someone's day.
Here's what I have at my advantage: I've never been a personality. I've always been a character actor.
Even though I'm an actor, I've gone to productions where there has been someone whose work is known in film, and you can't take your eyes off them. It unbalances the production. Whether they're good or not, it doesn't matter.
I know I'm profane. And outspoken.
That's another great thing about getting older. Your life is written on your face.
One of the reasons I am successful as a producer is that I've been a very successful housewife.
Getting older and adjusting to all the things that biologically happen to you is not easy to do and is a constant struggle and adjustment.
We are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species. There's no desire to be an adult.
I'm from working-class, blue-collar America, and I don't believe that people in that socioeconomic strata wait until they're 40 to have children.
I'm not really that interested in going back to playing small supporting roles.
I was too old, too young, too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, too blond, too dark - but at some point, they're going to need the other. So I'd get really good at being the other.
I went to my school careers counselors and said I wanted to be an actor, and they didn't know what to do. They showed me catalogues with pretty campuses and said, 'Oh, look, there's a theater building. Why don't you go there?'
There's only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power.
Female characters in literature are full. They're messy: they've got runny noses and burp and belch. Unfortunately, in film, female characters don't often have that kind of richness.
It was really fascinating for everyone involved in 'Fargo' that Marge Gunderson became the iconic character she did. I think it was something about the cultural zeitgeist and what was happening with women in the workplace.
I read books. Remember those? I read them, on paper.
Long-format television is a better way to tell a female story.
I'm not a depressive, but I certainly have mood swings. It's an occupational hazard, I would say, and I'm glad I'm in the occupation I'm in.
Yale? I was at Yale on a scholarship.
It's like some weird excuse for high school kids to vomit. It's not good. It's stupid. I'm sure that's not what St. Patrick's Day is supposed to be about, but who knows.
I portray female characters, so I have the opportunity to change the way people look at them. Even if I wasn't consciously doing that, it would happen anyway just because of how I present as a woman, or as a person. I present in a way that's not stereotypical, even if I'm playing a stereotypical role.
Unfortunately, any girl - unless you're playing the action hero - is going to end up at some point handcuffed, gagged, and waiting for the hero to save her.
We don't need a lot of initiatives for women in film; what we need is money.
I want to be revered. I want to be an elder; I want to be an elderess.
Everybody dresses like a teenager. Everybody dyes their hair. Everybody is concerned about a smooth face.
I swear a lot; I always have. So does my husband. Our son, surprisingly, does not swear much at all.
My name is Frances Louise McDormand, formerly known as Cynthia Ann Smith. I was born in Gibson City, Ill., in 1957. I identify as gender-normative, heterosexual, and white-trash American. My parents were not white trash. My birth mother was white trash.
I'm not an actor because I want my picture taken. I'm an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange.
I'm trained in the theater, and acting, for me, is about the imaginative life I create for myself, not about basing it on something real. I think that whatever I create becomes the reality for the audience.
