My dad was in the life insurance business, so I learned about selling when I was about 14 because I started working as a secretary.
I act, but I am a mother first and wife second.
I love the craft of acting, I love learning, I love everything that comes with the new project; the whole process is totally intoxicating to me.
It used to be the one or the other, right? You were the 'bad girl' or the 'good girl' or the 'bad mother' or 'the good mother,' 'the horrible businesswoman who eschewed her children' or 'the earth mother who was happy to be at home baking pies,' all of that stuff that we sort of knew was a lie.
I think you sort of shed skins as you go along in life. You get into your 40s, and you feel like, 'OK, no more pretending.' You get to just be who you are.
My character in 'Running With Scissors' is manic-depressive. She starts out as a wonderfully eccentric person, and then descends into a terrible illness.
Right now, I love the fact that I have so many opportunities, but I know this privileged position cannot last. That doesn't mean that I'll stop working. I picture myself as an old actress doing cameos in films with people saying: 'Isn't that that Bening woman?'
Getting all dressed up and putting on fancy clothes - all of that's a great thing, but oddly, it doesn't really have a lot to do with acting most of the time.
My mother is not somebody who's troubled by aging.
The tension I feel is the moment they say, 'Action!' Movies are like lightning in a bottle, and you always want to find when you possibly can catch a surprising moment.
I never felt like I had made it.
When I look at women, older than I am, in their 50s, 60, 70s, 80s, and I see women that I admire, I think, 'Oh, I get it; that's how I'm going to be.' I'm not scared. I want to be that.
I think in the past, around the time that method acting became so prevalent, it used to be that American actors were thought to be the kind that would work more from the inside out, and that the English actors worked more from the outside in.
Even with a stable character, you want something surprising to happen, hopefully because that's what the camera loves the most. That's what is great about film.
What really motivates you to try to work things out as an actor is in large part fear, because you want to get into that narrative and bring the audience along.
Every person's opinion, in a way, does matter.
Oh, honey, I'm from Oklahoma! This is who I am - middle-class all the way!
I don't see myself as competing with other actresses. I mean, I went through a time when I was in New York, and I was going to lots of auditions and trying to get parts, but even then, you're not really competing with the other actresses. There is a competition going on, but it's not like something you can win in that way.
Find the story you want to tell. If you don't want to write it, find somebody to write it.
The time I spend with my kids informs every fiber of who I am.
I think we as celebrities have a lot more control.
There's no question that you can explore aspects of yourself through roles that you play, and you get a chance to investigate yourself; that's healthy, and it's therapeutic in a way. But if you're indulging yourself, exploration at the cost of the story or the project, that's not good.
Acting is not about being famous, it's about exploring the human soul.
If you can open people's hearts first, then maybe people's minds get opened after that.
I've tried to take roles with great demands.
To me idealized characters are so boring to play, especially having grown up in the classical theater. That's a great experience, but as a woman, especially, you've played a lot of idealized characters. So when you've got someone who has weaknesses as well as strengths, that's interesting.
I like that I've been through things, that when something happens, it resonates with something that already happened. It's not that things like loss are more or less painful. But they're deeper. I find that fascinating.
I think when you're at your best as an actor, it is cathartic.
Our children see us a certain way, and we want to be seen by them in a certain way. I certainly want to be a strong, stable, loving, consistent presence in my children's lives. But we are human beings, too.
I like things that I feel comfortable in.
It's kind of a mystery to me, as far as my own life experiences and what I've witnessed - why some people can just move on through traumatic experiences, in childhood particularly, and why other people are just paralyzed by it. I just don't know how and why that is.
We still want to idealize moms, and sometimes we want to idealize actresses who are moms, too. I know that's something I've experienced, but we're all just doing the best we can and we're all trying to raise our kids and talk to them about everything that needs to be discussed.
My sister and I fought a lot when we were kids. I was the little bratty sister, and she would kind of walk away, not wanting to be associated with me.
When I started in the theater, I'd do plays by Shakespeare or Ibsen or Chekhov, and they all created great women's roles.
It's easier to see in someone else, another actor, how they kind of disappear and then this other persona appears. A great actor is a thing of mystery.
Anybody who has children and children who are well feels a sense of responsibility towards parents and kids and families that are struggling and that aren't well.
I saw a Shakespeare play when I was - I guess I was in junior high. And I just fell in love with the theater because, for me, it was a combination of big ideas and feeling.
We all perform our lives in a way. And the actor is a perfect metaphor to get at that theme of 'how do we find our authentic selves?' And that we all - whether we're actors or not - perform ourselves. As a way of searching. As a way of fumbling around and trying to say, is this my voice? Is this who I am?
I still remember the five points of salesmanship: attention, interest, conviction, desire and close.
I feel really lucky that I'm able to pursue the work that I love. I want my children to see that. I want them to have that for themselves, something that they love, that they do, that they pursue in their lives as a way of growing and learning.
By the time I was in high school, Roe v. Wade had passed, so that was also happening; girls were getting pregnant and getting abortions - and that happened in my school too.
I'm still very critical of myself in film.
My husband and I have very similar backgrounds even though we're years apart. So there are a lot of things that we basically share.
Anyone who is drawn in broad strokes either negatively or positively is generally not very interesting to play.
I'm interested in writing that explores all sides of human beings.
Somebody said something really smart: It's like you end up being the defense attorney for your role. Your job is to defend their point of view. You're fighting for what they want. You learn that in acting school - it's Acting 1A: 'What do you want? What's in the way?'
I find the reality of our emotional lives interesting.
I feel that certain things are best kept inside a family and not discussed with anyone else.
I remember hearing someone say that good acting is more about taking off a mask than putting one on, and in movie acting, certainly that's true. With the camera so close, you can see right down into your soul, hopefully. So being able to do that in a way is terrifying, and in another way, truly liberating. And I like that about it.
