I always think of myself as an 18-year-old beginning my career, all the time.
— Marian Seldes
I've been, for want of a better phrase, a supporting actress so much of my life.
I'm not a good tourist. I don't like walking around and looking at things. I like being in a city and working and finding out how other people live.
I love being with someone, taking care of someone.
People say, 'How can you stay in a play for a long time?' I say, 'The audience is never the same.'
I grew up in a house where language was appreciated and cared about. I'm sure that, although I wasn't aware of it at the time, it must have made an impression on me.
I think the first time I was ever really conscious of the difference between people's voices was that my mother's voice was so soft and gentle and her pronunciation was so perfect.
An actress spends a lifetime observing people. You build up a mental library. No, not a library. Make that a repository.
I've never been obsessed by how I looked. In fact, I would rather have looked more ordinary so I could play more parts more truthfully.
Acting takes so much energy.
Confidence has nothing to do with what you look like. If you obsess over that, you'll end up being disappointed in yourself all the time. Instead, high self-esteem comes from how you feel in any moment. So walk into a room acting like you're in charge, and spend your energy on making the people around you happy.
Theatre is where I am confident and happy.
The kind of acting I love is when you watch and you discover what you think perhaps you weren't supposed to see: the chink in the armor.
If I had a religious belief, I would want it to be as strong as my belief in the theater.
I try to find humor in everything I do, because I think all great plays - even great tragedies - have enormous humor in them.
I think of myself as only being an actress when I'm acting, but my friends will say I act all the time.
I would hate to think of the theatre world without critics. Without them, we'd not have the record of each season.
I'm fairly obedient. I do what I'm told.
I have had a career in which, almost without exception, every single person I've worked with has helped me.
There's no trick of teaching acting. Either someone wants to do it and is gifted, or not.
I almost never go to the theatre without seeing someone I've taught or known at Juilliard.
I know I'm funny, because I'm eccentric, I'm odd. I'm not what you expect.
How do people who live utterly alone survive? There are so many things that won't open. I've got a few dresses in New York, and I can somehow get them on, but I can't get them off.
When I began to act, I was about 6 years old. Everything you learned, every period of history you studied, you did a play about it.
Unfortunately, there are mental invalids of every age who exist on other people's terms. It's lazy for older persons to let others make up their minds for them. People have to overcome that.
If you're unhappy in a relationship, I think you just don't trust yourself for getting into another one.
All I've done is live my life in the theater and loved it.
