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" 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. "

Melissa Leo

Now

Experience

Mask

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" I'm very old-school. I like a director to direct me. I like to be the actor. "

Melissa Leo

Direct

Very

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You have to let the costume inform you. "

" I live in the country, and I live a fairly natural, holistic life. Sometimes I get put up in hotels where they use chemical sprays to clean things, or there are chemicals used that I stay away from. "

" 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. "

" That's what acting is. You're not alone. It's reacting. That's what we do. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 got none. I mean, I have no religion. I like the quote unquote 'Virgin Mary,' but no Catholicism. "

Melissa Leo

Mary

Got

" 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. "

" An actor's life is fairly lonely. "

" More often, I'm asked to play somebody's mother, somebody's partner, somebody's wife. "

Melissa Leo

Mother

Wife

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I think the funny thing about acting for me - and I hold it in a very holy, spiritual way - not to be overly fundamentalist about it, but it's that important to me - is that it is an ancient healing art. "

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

" 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. "

" Ever since Marilyn Monroe was transformed from one of the prettiest girls you could ever hope to see into an icon, everyone has been trying to repeat that icon. And now the entire industry is filled with, and by and large run by, wannabes. "

" That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it. "

" I know that one of my difficulties as an actor is to try to do too much, from all those years ago when my acting took place live on a stage. It was just my shiny face there, so you've gotta be super careful how much over-expressing you're doing with your eyes and nose and so on. "