Best 71 quotes of Laura Linney on MyQuotes

A magnetic personality doesn't necessarily indicate a good heart.

But I've also spread my net very wide. If there's one thing that I've done on purpose it's to take whatever job, so long as it's interesting and challenging, whether it's theatre, radio, TV or film.

Cancer is so much bigger than a TV show.

Collaboration. ... For me, it has informed every move I've ever made. And it saved me in many ways and still does. When things get hard, you can cling to the work.

Comedy is a way to make sense of chaos. It's a way of dealing with things that are overwhelming, that threaten you; it's a way to survive and get closer to the truth.

Courtroom dramas can be boring.

Doing the right thing has power.

Fame didn't happen to me in my 20s, it has been a gradual thing which probably makes it easier to deal with.

Fear, anxiety and neurosis: that's just in the suitcase when you're an actor.

For me to have the opportunity to stay with one character for, God willing, a long period of time, is really exciting.

I always laugh to myself when I listen to some really big A-list star saying that they are just a normal person.

I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write. Language and punctuation is used specifically, and most of the time actors can find wonderful clues about character in the rhythm and cadence of the language used.

I am very lucky, because for the most part people are very nice to me, and I am still able to go about my life and ride the subway and all that.

I believe that no matter what you do in life, if you learn the basics through theater, it will help you in everything else - problem solving, communication, discipline, all of that stuff.

I could have gone to the gym for three hours a day and bought into all that, but I just wasn't interested.

I crave a cone of silence every once in while.

I don't mind aging. I mean, my whole thing is, it's just a privilege to age.

I don't think you should exploit your own pain.

I don't want to spend my life in my 40s feeling bad about being in my 40s, and then all of a sudden I'm 50, and I will have missed a whole decade!

I enjoy learning about different periods and people, and then taking what's universal about the human condition and seeing where it matches up. No matter where you are, certain things unite everybody.

I find that things don't bother me as much. If I had a bad day on set, it sort of just rolls of my back in a way that it didn't before. So that's where the biggest difference is, stuff that used to get under my skin or that I would worry about or be anxious about just isn't a problem. So in some ways, having a child has been very liberating. I found it very liberating.

I get very, very, very irritable with people who complain about getting old, because I know a lot of people who would gladly trade places with us. I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not saying it doesn't hurt your feelings, I'm not saying it's not painful - and physically as well as mentally and spiritually - and it's frightening at times. However, people have really lost perspective, and it's a really bizarre topic of conversation that it's become a cultural peg in our world that aging is a bad thing. It's not logical to me.

I grew up in Manhattan and, since my father was a playwright, all I ever wanted to be was a stage actress.

I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side.

I had learning disabilities, and I couldn't express myself in the written word.

I have a bag with a toothbrush and toothpaste and all the things I might need during the day. I call the bag my trailer. Sometimes you don't have a trailer, so that's my trailer.

I know that actors and actresses have a great reputation for being very, very selfish, and in some cases, that's very true. But in the theater I find it doesn't help you to be selfish. You sort of have to be selfless in the theater, and the more selfless you are - that doesn't mean don't take care of yourself - but the more you sort of surrender to the work, I find, the better the work is. That's just my experience.

I know what people want to hear is the connection with the son, Roger, when you have a child. I would love to tell that there was an epiphany as to what it is to be a mom, but I didn't feel any difference there.

I love actors, regardless of where they are in their skill level. There's something terribly satisfying about working with someone who's really learning.

I love to work in all sorts of different situations. I think you learn a lot, which is why I try not to approach something the same way, because it might not be appropriate, and then you can get lazy just out of boredom. So I love any approach.

I'm very hard on my bags because I tend to carry a lot of stuff with me.

I never felt like a happy-go-lucky ingenue to begin with. And parts are written better when you're older. When you're young, you're written to be an ingenue, and you're written to be a quality. You're actually not written to be a person, you're written for your youth to inspire someone else, usually a man. So I find it just much more liberating.

I still know I have an awful lot to learn, and I hope I'm put in whatever situation it is that's gonna help me learn it, or that I'll get to watch really good people do what they do.

I think everybody handles things very differently and you can conjecture, but until you're put in that situation, you really don't know.

I think everyone's journey through this crazy, weird, wild, wonderful area of work named acting is really their own. And if you're going for something that isn't yours, you're wasting time. You could be focused on your own work instead of thinking about somebody else.

I think the way we talk about cancer has really evolved. I remember the way my grandmother used to talk about it, like a death sentence, no-one would even mention the word.

It is always good to explore the stuff you don't agree with, to try and understand a different lifestyle or foreign worldview. I like to be challenged in that way, and always end up learning something I didn't know.

It's always nice when you do something and it's well received as opposed to the other way which God knows happens to everybody. When the good times come around, you take a deep breath, appreciate it, but not take it too seriously.

It was so soon after I'd had my son and I really wasn't planning on going back to work for a while. I will walk over hot coals to work with Bill Condon on anything, the experience that you have with him is just too good... I've certainly never worked with him before so the trio of Bill [Codon], Ian [McKellen], and Sherlock Holmes, and England: it was too much to say "no" to.

I've always thought that I'm sexy in my own right, but not in a way that people thought was bankable.

Most scripts are written to be green lit. They're not written to be acted. And a lot of writers with the greatest intention in the world don't write for actors. They don't understand the architecture of what an actor needs to get from point A to point B.

My castings sort of go in phases. There'll be several icy professional parts - a lawyer or a cop. And then there'll be the intelligent-but-wounded group and then the period things. It goes in sequence.

My family is from the South, and I can remember all those ladies I grew up with, like my great-aunts, who had handkerchiefs. There's something sweet about them.

My parents were divorced and I didn't grow up with my father, but I spent a lot of time around him, and his influence on me has been profound.

My parents were divorced and I would spend weekends with my father.

Our culture is set up on a feud mentality, or a "Housewives" mentality, that women just fight. And it's such a shallow way to exist as far as our evolution is concerned, and our culture is concerned. It's fun to watch women fight, in a storytelling way, but in the world, women shouldn't be seen as a threat to other women.

People can't really place me. They're not really sure who I am. Sometimes they think I'm Helen Hunt. Sometimes they think I'm Laura Dern.

People have to look to the right places for guidance. Looking at a certain type of entertainment shouldn't be where you go for guidance. To zone out, have a laugh, sure - but it's not a great example on how to navigate on a journey. There are other places to look.

Some big movies are terrific, and some aren't. They're made for different reasons, and they have different impacts and they're very different experiences making them. But if they're good, if you're with good people, then hooray.

Tanning is tricky, because a lot of people just look orange.