I was part of a hip-hop group called Fly Style. I was one of two white girls, and I was part of the younger company, which was called Touch of Style. And it was amazing. It gave me a different perception of dance and beauty because the other girls were mostly African-American and Latina.
— Greta Gerwig
I sound like an old man when I talk about the Internet, but I am actually worried about what it's doing to our brains and our sense of connection.
I feel like a good pair of diamond studs goes a long way. They make everything look dressy, and you just seem more put together.
There's something very satisfying about old cameras because they're ingenious. I mean when you take them apart and actually see, 'Oh, this is how we make photographs,' it's an ingenious thing, but it feels like it's in a way a layman can appreciate, whereas a digital camera, I don't even begin to know what goes into making a digital camera.
Woody Allen was the reason I wanted to move to New York City and one of the reasons I wanted to make films. I felt that I understood his films, and I love them so much. When you're starting out, certainly, you have this sense of wanting to talk back to people who have influenced you, and I always wanted to talk back to Woody Allen.
I love writing, and I think I'm kind of a workaholic. I'm happiest when I'm working.
I knew I wanted to be involved with theater or film in any way I could, either as a writer or director or actress.
I was a massive Whit Stillman fan. Groupie. I would have done anything for him.
It's really hard for me to be around people I admire.
I always feel like a vague failure in L.A. - it always makes me feel like I should somehow be different than I am. And I don't know why.
The more particular you make something, the more universal it becomes.
I stopped being interested in improvisation, and I continue to not be that interested in it. Comedians can do it on a different level because they have a goal, but if you're improvising something that's dramatic, there's not that much to be good at.
I'm all for the banalities of life and humiliation and everyday tragedies, but I also think people have big moments, and they have bigness in them.
The transition from tiny movies to less tiny movies to really big movies has been actually quite seamless in a lot of ways as far as my experience of acting in them.
I don't really decide what the core of the story is before I write. I write to figure out what the story is. And I think the characters end up talking to you and telling you what they want to be doing and what is important to them. So in some ways, your job is to listen as much as it is to write.
I think being attracted to mistakes is one of the things that film can capture in a way that theater can't. Film can capture a moment of spontaneous life that will never be captured again.
I thought movies were handed down by God. I knew that theater was made by people because I saw the people in front of me, but movies seemed like they were delivered, wholly made, from Zeus's head or something.
I was very serious about ballet until the age of 12, at which point my body changed, and it wasn't quite right.
I'm scared of the Internet. That's not real, but it is. I'm worried about what it's doing to us.
I always have a soft spot in my heart for New York designers and independent designers, people who are doing the fashion equivalent of what I'm trying to do in film.
I feel like I'm an actor that likes to have lots of points of connection.
For me, the French new wave is Truffaut and Rohmer. Godard I sometimes have trouble with because he's very much of a director's director. I feel Truffaut is such a humanist, and I always go in that direction.
I'm not goal-oriented so much as I'm constantly aware of what I'm passionate about, and I'm constantly updating the list. I envision many possible futures for myself where I could be happy, so I just try to keep my passions alive.
I sometimes have to turn off the fan part of my brain when I'm acting; otherwise, it would be terrible.
I thought Mia Hansen-Love was a true auteur, and I always wanted to work with her. Mia's empathy for her characters and her ability to use the language of cinema to communicate real human depth is extraordinary. She's a humanist.
When I graduated from college, I thought that I would probably never be an actor because it seemed like everyone was big by the time they were 20 or not at all.
When I was a kid, I used to do my homework in the living room, where there was a picture window. I was hoping that someone would walk by and see me looking very studious in my living room.
I've never worked on anything that I haven't in some way enjoyed.
Working is not instantly rewarding. It's a long process, and it's much easier to just feed whatever dopamine cycles exist in your brain in instant gratification ways. I get it; I do it.
Writing on my own versus co-writing kind of is the exact same thing because we don't sit in the same room when we write. We're always writing alone anyway.
I think structure is so deep in us. We put it in stories we tell our friends or in emails we write. We want it. It's how we create meaning.
Something people say about acting is that acting is listening. But I think that writing is listening, too. That you really have to listen to what are they saying and what they're communicating to you. And so, a lot of it is just getting stuff down.
In terms of sheer pleasure, Tom Stoppard was very big for me because he is so funny and so smart, and it felt delicious reading him.
I'm not really capable of memorizing stuff without moving around, that's how I do it.
One of the things that happens when you write characters - and maybe this is my own sentimentality - is that I always find I have an instinct to protect them.
Young Harrison Ford, what a dreamboat.
For Mike Mills, I learned that having dance parties and crying with your cast does not make you a weak director, it makes you a strong director.
As a writer, I think I'm mainly interested in contemporary themes, so when I create my own stuff, it's inherently that. But as an actor, I would like to do lots of different things. I would love to play someone completely different from myself in a costume drama.
I'm really interested in trying to tell stories about women that don't involve romantic components. That's so much a part of the way we feel about female characters and their needs that it feels like it's built in - but I'd like to find a way that it's not. There are so many more stories than that.
Acting was always the first love, but a lot of people want to be actors, and my goal was, 'Come hell or high water, I will be a part of this world, however I can.' So that just led me to throwing myself into every aspect of narrative storytelling I could.
I love movies, but sometimes I think it's better for actresses not to be total cinephiles. You have to be able to do the work at some point; you can't be totally starstruck. 'I can't believe it's Woody Allen!' You have to get past that.
I wouldn't call myself 'into the DJ scene.' I have friends who are DJs, like James Murphy. I was really into the DJ scene at his wedding. But generally, I'm not at the clubs. I've never been to a rave.
I'm, like, the only actor in New York who's never, ever been on any 'Law & Order.' And I've auditioned for so many. The sad thing is I love 'Law & Order.' I'm really obsessed with it. And they always said to me, 'You seem like you're making fun of the material.'
Everybody is always in the middle of their own opera.
I feel like every year there's a thing about 'not enough roles for ladies!' and, then, also an article, like 'The Year of The Woman.' I think that we all just know in our hearts they're underrepresented. But that doesn't mean that there aren't amazing moments.
I think that people in their 20s actually aren't given enough credit for their ambition.
I loved 'Moonlight.' I thought it was really beautiful. Really great.
I'm so interested in taking tropes from other movies and putting them on something where it doesn't belong.
Sacramento is where I grew up, so I felt like it had not been given its proper due in cinema.
Books and theater were the way I understood the world and also the way I organized my sense of morality, of how to live a good life.
