Love means a lot to me, and I love loving, and I love boys.
— Laura Dern
Sadly, half of marriages end in divorce. Half of my girl friends and male friends have been through one, and their kids are doing great. There's no shame around it - unless you want to project that on to yourself - but certainly there's no longer cultural shame. Everyone is walking through it.
Ben Stiller, who I love and who is a friend and is such an incredible actor - he's hilarious, obviously, but I thought his performance in 'Greenberg' was extraordinary.
I don't think you have to be in these serious, heavy, independent little movies to be an actor. Some of the most interesting acting I've seen is on cable television.
I got picked for very unique and independent filmmaking experiences with auteurs. And I'm so lucky.
In American culture we are supposed to take a pill when we're depressed or in grief as opposed to actually feeling.
I was raised in the '70s, and I've worked with people I love, and I've been on sets with my parents, with people who run a set and require of actors a sense of liberty and freedom and exploration and failure into brave achievement.
You'll be offered the 'lead' in this new hot film with such-and-such A-list director, 'a fabulous part' - a fabulous part? A fabulous part is a character with a soul, who starts here and goes to there, you know? There aren't many of those.
Irvin Kershner, no matter what anyone says, has done some great work. 'Eyes of Laura Mars' is an incredible movie.
My daughter wants to do yoga with me and wants to be in the theater thing, and I can't tell her, 'Don't be an actress.' My son loves guitar and loves to be in a band and wants his iTunes downloaded with all this old-school hip-hop so he understands where hip-hop came from.
Having egregious divorces - where you just hate each other - is really the easy way out.
I don't want to mess with my face. So I'm becoming fluent in French so I can go to France and make French films when I'm 60.
All I can start with is what moves me and feels like a great challenge as an actor and I think is saying something unusual or irreverent or human - honest in some way.
You don't always get to work as much as you like, because I'm waiting to find things that I care about. Sometimes that's frustrating.
The bad news is, I have worked less than I have liked. The good news is, I can look back on my body of work and feel truly proud of the work I have done.
Starting my career as a kid, I was doing what jobs I got.
Growth doesn't hurt. This is what I've learned. In the end, it doesn't hurt. It hurts while it's happening. But in the end, you know, for life, for parenting, and for the arts, it's not a bad - not a bad thing to try for.
My dad was always interested in characters he didn't understand - he was such a great bad guy in movies. And that is really the thing that calls me to the material often: something I struggle to understand in human behaviour.
I love Clint Eastwood, and I wish to work with him again. He's completely irreverent about everything, including his own beautiful work.
Anybody you make a movie with when you're 12 and they're 14, you're going to know them your whole life.
I know that I've seen a mannerism, or a way I've cried, or something, where I see a flash of my parents.
Something that I've cared about deeply my whole career is getting to work with filmmakers and inventors of stories that are hysterical because they are just so painfully true.
Any journey of a creative person has, you know, really unusual challenges and years where you don't work and years where you work.
I always wanted to do a 'Ms. Smith Goes to Washington.'
What I consider a good part for a woman and what some other Hollywood people think are good women's parts are very different. I don't want to play the supportive girlfriend who has nine scenes and just loves that man, maybe cheats on him in one scene but will always be there, and I mean - give me a break.
I've seen 3-D movies where it seems a little crude or too in-your-face.
God bless nannies.
I was raised by two actors in a moment in time - the Seventies - when there was no judgment of characters, no heroes and bad guys.
If we could all figure out a way to just be true to ourselves and have a good time doing what we're doing, it would be a lot more fun.
My mother is extremely interested in everything esoteric.
Everything's cyclical. Having been raised by actors, I watched their careers, and the challenge is to take time off.
I have never been someone who applied 'work begets work' to my career, sometimes unfortunately.
Decision-making is very scary for me.
I'm not averse to being a supporting character. I try to pick parts where I can add something.
I was raised on movie sets, and I decided for myself at a very young age that it was what I wanted to do.
Unfortunately, I was making comedies in my 20s, but other people didn't realize they were comedies.
If you're looking to be loved for a part, it's great and enticing to be adorable in a romantic comedy. But then, as an actor, you get stuck.
There are people who consider it almost unpatriotic to be inquisitive and to be truthful about your opinions.
I've worked with David Lynch since I was 17, and working with him is home and family; being around Alexander Payne is home and family, Jonathan Demme. There are directors... Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson... They are directors where I create homes.
For me, the greatest good fortune I have being raised by actors is I came in knowing that a career is the ebb and flow.
Meditation is a practice that is considered mainstream: The NFL uses it, the NBA uses it, heart patients use it. It's very easy to consider yourself a meditator and not be too alternative-minded.
If you have a movie coming out, and people are talking about you, the amount of scripts will build.
As an actor, you're not kind of thinking about your own work or watching the movie for the first time.
Every role is a new form of surrender.
For people who feel things in an enormous way, it's pretty hard to live in this world.
I think there are ways to get so caught up in your career and being so heavy and dramatic, and everyone wants to be a tortured genius.
At the end of the day, you have to sit with the scripts and decide where your heart is.
It's one thing to have forced time off as an actor, and another thing when you actually say, 'I don't want to read anything, and I don't want to talk to anybody.'
With 'Mask,' 'Smooth Talk' and 'Blue Velvet,' I loved the specific experiences so much. Each one was a specific filmmaker with a specific vision.
I try to do things I love or care about for some reason.
