Like anything else, acting can become boring - a chore, really - if there isn't any challenge. And I like taking challenges. Just when people think they have me figured out, I like to surprise them.
— Laura Dern
I tend to always love material with flawed protagonists and morally ambiguous people.
It's my deepest interest as an actor: I love discovering how human beings work, how their flaws reveal themselves - how to learn and grow from that - and how characters teach me things as a woman and as a parent.
It's really fun to act like a bimbo. But it's fun to act like a bimbo only when people know that you really aren't one.
Whatever character you play, it gives you the chance to expose another side of yourself that maybe you've never felt comfortable with, or never knew about.
Unfortunately, overall, movies are a conglomerate. People buy and sell people in this business, which can get really ugly.
The really courageous and bold thing is to make movies about human behaviour.
'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' is one of the greatest films of all time.
It's a strange world, as David Lynch would say.
I'm lucky enough that directors sometimes seek me out for little projects that people don't even know about, that just surface later on.
I wanted to go to Jupiter. That was my plan from day one, and David Lynch gave me the ticket.
I like movies about longing and desperation, and dark and light things, stories about people struggling to raise children, and to have relationships and be intimate with each other.
I don't turn my nose up at anything. If it's a great part, it's a great part. I'd love to do a box-office hit.
A lot of people have asked whether acting is in my genes. I don't know if anyone is born to act. And it certainly wasn't pushed on me. It was something I wanted to do.
I love being in my 40s.
I knew I wanted to become an actor when I was 7 years old. My dad was working with Alfred Hitchcock, my mom was working with Martin Scorsese - and it was the great summer of my childhood.
Wild at Heart made a few people angry-they thought I was exploiting women by showing that when a woman says no she really means yes.
What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?
There's something so accessible about heroes who have faults.
That's life - to turn each other on, to feel good, to feel in love.
Luckily, I was raised by people who'd already seen all the yuck stuff, which is why they originally didn't want me to act. I understood the difference between getting a part at a Hollywood party and getting a job.
It would be great to make a movie that had the style of a great '30's film.
I'm interested in flawed protagonists. I was raised on them.
I really don't consider myself to be a conventional Hollywood star. I've never really been marketed by the big studios to do mass market box office films.
I knew you had to go in and audition and maybe they'd hire you, and that's where you start. I had a good understanding about press: that it's the actor's responsibility to publicize his or her films.
I've got the sort of personality that requires me to find some sort of release, and for me, it's performing.
My dad taught me to never be pigeonholed; to really allow yourself to reinvent characters as they reinvent you; to be bold and to be willing to play seemingly unlikeable people.
There are a lot more female writers wanting to direct their own material and hopefully will be given the opportunity.
When man decides he can control nature, he's in deep trouble.
We like our archetypes and heroes to be what they are at face value. And life doesn't work out like that.
There's always a side of a woman that likes a man from the other side of the tracks.
My mother opened a bank account for me when I made $60 on my first day of work as an extra. She's that kind of mother.
It's always been a desire of mine to work with my parents.
I've always loved film more than theater.
I was raised by an actress, and I watched all those women turn 60 and ask, Shouldn't get face work? My mother and Anne Bancroft said, We're not going to fall into that.
I made a commitment to myself; that I wanted to be an actress, and I wanted to do films that make a difference. It has to move people.
I hope we can be consummate artists as women or revolutionaries, or whatever women want to be, and also have love, not only for ourselves but from a partner.
