I've never been a sunny personality. I've never been outgoing. I'm a solitary person.
— Jessica Lange
I do love acting. But to work as a photojournalist would have been extraordinary.
What I love about photography, and it's the same thing I love about acting, really, is that it forces you, like, right into the moment, where you can't be distracted, where you can't be, like, thinking about other things or ahead of yourself or behind yourself.
I've worked with some teachers and coaches over the years, but I didn't really study theater or technique or voice or any of that stuff extensively.
I regret those times when I've chosen the dark side. I've wasted enough time not being happy.
Your children are grown and your career has slowed down - all the stuff that took up so much attention is gone, and you're left with expansive time and space. You have to reimagine who you are and what life is about.
If I didn't have children I'd be a much better actress. I wouldn't be so distracted. I could pour 100 percent of my energies into it, to promote the investigation which acting is.
All through life I've harbored anger rather than expressed it at the moment.
TV is sort of the only way to go for an actress my age to make a decent salary; with independent films, you just can't.
To stay interested in acting, I have to keep trying stuff I've never done before.
There are no explanations, there are no answers.
The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.
Sometimes parts just come along when it's the perfect time for you to do them.
It comes down to something really simple: Can I visualize myself playing those scenes? If that happens, then I know that I will probably end up doing it.
I've been thinking a lot about next year, which will be the first time in 25 years that I don't have a child at home.
I love being a mother. I loved being a daughter, a sister, a wife. I love being a woman with men. I love having given birth.
I am tortured when I am away from my family, from my children. I am horribly guilt-ridden.
Photography was a blessing because it filled my time. If I had to start over, I'd pursue photography - probably to the exclusion of acting.
There's something magical still about it when I get in a darkroom, and you've shot a roll of film and you develop it and you look at your negatives, and there's, like, imagery there. That always stuns me.
I never shot on sets, but if I was traveling somewhere or on location, I would always have my camera, and I'd always be - it's that kind of fly on the wall approach to photography, though. I don't engage the subject. I like to sneak around, skulk about in the dark.
I like playing characters who are out there on the edge, where they can explode at any moment or fall off the precipice.
If I had to start over, I'd pursue photography - probably to the exclusion of acting.
I have made decisions based from purely an actor's point of view.
I never think of the future. I never imagine what comes next.
When I am home for like a two-year stretch, I get antsy, because I want to work.
To work with a director that has emotional commitment and passion toward the characters, and the piece, and the experiences, it only enriches your work.
This idea of selfishness as a virtue, as opposed to generosity: That, to me, is unnatural.
The worst is when I talk myself into something. Sometimes you take things because you want to work with a certain actor, or you want to work with a director, even if the script or the part's not that great.
Successful model? That's a myth. The year I modeled was the most painful year of my life. Editors would always talk to you in the third person as though you were merely a piece of merchandise.
One of the things I love about acting is that it reveals a certain something about yourself, but it doesn't reveal your own personal story.
In families there is always the mythology. My father died when my kids were quite young still, and yet they still tell his stories. That is how a person lives on.
I worked on my voice for Sweet Dreams, but only to match my speaking voice to Patsy's actual singing voice. That was my way into that character.
I have been a waitress, and I was a damn fine waitress too, let me tell you.
For me, nothing has ever taken precedence over being a mother and having a family and a home.
So much of my sense of who I am is tied to mothering. When they left home, I fell into a huge, empty, black hole. Your children are grown and your career has slowed down - all the stuff that took up so much attention is gone, and you're left with expansive time and space.
If you're really in the process of photographing, you are absolutely aware. You are looking.
For me, acting was always a way to explore emotions - to dip into the well and really try to reach rock bottom down there. That was the most exciting part of it. I hadn't found anything that really allowed me to do that until I came upon acting.
Box office success has never meant anything. I couldn't get a film made if I paid for it myself. So I'm not 'box office' and never have been, and that's never entered into my kind of mind set.
Photography was a blessing because it filled my time.
I could be making a lot more money now if I had chosen a different kind of movie, but none of that matters to me... I've done the parts I wanted to do.
Once I started on 'Frances' I discovered it was literally a bottomless well. It devastated me to maintain that for eighteen weeks, to be immersed in this state of rage for twelve to eighteen hours a day. It spilled all over, into other areas of my life.
We are not the originators of the story. I think it's actually the opposite when you're an actor. You're telling somebody else's story.
To work on the actual location I think is great. This thing of going to Canada and pretending you're in New York, it's terrible.
There was that feminist myth that we can do everything. I don't think you can.
The only place I've felt was really my home is my cabin up north. There's something in the water there that connects me to that place. There's also this sense of isolation and loneliness about it that I've never been able to shake.
Sometimes the odds are against you-the director doesn't know what the hell he's doing, or something falls apart in the production, or you're working with an actor who's just unbearable.
It was easier to do Shakespeare than a lot of modern movie scripts that are so poorly written.
I've got nothing left to lose at this point. The work I've done is out there.
I never felt like I belonged in Minnesota when I was growing up there. That's why I was out the door as soon as I turned 18.
I had never done Shakespeare before, but I don't think you can be an actor and not do it. There were moments when I thought, I'm just not going to be able to pull this off.
