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" I always wanted to play a nun, and to play the Reverend Mother was a thrill of a lifetime for me. But, generations back, my family were not churchgoers, which is an unusual thing in the United States. "

Melissa Leo

Mother

Play

Always

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" Acting is the business of truth, so that we can see ourselves reflected back and learn. "

" You know, when I got started on television in the '80s, you would go to the costume department, and if you were a female they put you into a skirt. And you had a pocketbook, usually a shoulder bag. "

" Well, I don't think of myself as a feminist at all. As soon as we start labeling and categorizing ourselves and others, that's going to shut down the world. "

" I'm a very lucky girl who gets to act for a living! So why sit around griping and grousing about what's not there. "

" An actor's life is fairly lonely. "

" People often expect me to be something other than what I am. "

" The power of television - it's so present in our lives, we don't even know how powerful it is. "

" I'm not particularly fond of the hybrid writer-director or actor-director. "

" To get the hippie out of certain characters is probably the most difficult thing for me. I was not a hippie by choice but by birth. "

Melissa Leo

Difficult

Hippie

" I do wish everyone would call me Leo. It's not that I don't like Melissa. But the more I hear it called out, the worse it sounds. "

Melissa Leo

Everyone

Wish

" The key to acting has much more to do with listening than with talking. "

" If I'm going to get an ice cream cone two or three times a week, then it's a pleasure. No guilt. "

" 'Wayward Pines' has largely been, in my experience, a show left to the actors. "

" The climate informs the character. "

" I do get a fair amount of scripts; I got 'Frozen River' kinda just that way. I have a hard time turning my back on anybody who says they have something for me. "

" An actor has to be very, very careful, as one of the most wonderful props - and actors love props - is a cigarette. There's so much to do with it: you can bring it up to your face, play with the smoke. It's just the greatest - ever since I was 16 and in acting school in England, I've been playing around with cigarettes. "

" You ask me a question. I have a blank mind. You ask me a question, and the question is informed, and you're interested, and now my mind starts popping. That's what conversation is. That's what communicating is. "

" I think there has only been one time in my entire career that I've ever gone back to shoot a scene. And it was a scene that, when we were shooting it, we knew that it wasn't working. We knew there was a disagreement between the actor and director. So, we went back. "

" I'm not a particularly ambitious actress. I love to go and do my work, head down in the dirt, and be the character. "

" As an actor, you live a little bit of a cloistered life. It's a lonely life. You oddly, strangely find yourself all alone, quite often, with a lot of time to think. "

" Why do we have to pretend we're not in the sales game? I didn't sign on to be a salesman. I signed on to be an actor. "

" I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke. "

" To play someone when the character masks their own emotions, doesn't understand their own emotions, has no release for their own emotions, and yet is full of emotion - that is a much harder character to play than someone who has somewhere to put it. "

" I haven't had a lot of experience with glamour. I've never had to mask myself, as many now not-so-young actresses have had to do. Female actors in that regard have a different lot in life than male actors. "

" There were not enough women like Kay on TV and now there are none. "

" Docudrama is not really my game, but it's interesting to play real people; it's interesting to play 'real.' "

" Through all of this lovely interviewing, and nice things people say, and the rest of it, I have learned that I am an actor. That is my profession. That is my job. That is how I make a living. So I am just out there making a living. "

" You have to let the costume inform you. "

" Being an actor on a movie set is like going to the playground at recess. "

Melissa Leo

Going

Actor

" I am that lucky woman who has been living my life all my life. Anything can happen now. Anything. And it will be only whip cream and delightful things. Even in the conflict and the hardship. "