Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I know what it meant to me to play the Reverend Mother, a role I've, in some ways, prepared a lifetime to do. It's why I took the part. "
Melissa Leo
Know
Why
Role
Related Quotes:
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
Funny
Spiritual
Healing
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
Bag
You
Television
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
Life
Conflict
Woman
" My mom was a '70s mom. She paved a road that no one had yet walked. "
Melissa Leo
Mom
Paved
Road
" The key to acting has much more to do with listening than with talking. "
Melissa Leo
Listening
Acting
Key
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
Start
World
Myself
" I'm interested in what the fans think, in what would make them feel connected to the Wayward Pines they had grown to love. I had a lot of fun thinking about the first season. "
Melissa Leo
Feel
Think
Fun
" There were not enough women like Kay on TV and now there are none. "
Melissa Leo
Enough
None
Now
" If I'm going to get an ice cream cone two or three times a week, then it's a pleasure. No guilt. "
Melissa Leo
Guilt
Ice Cream
Pleasure
" I think this notion of acting and glamour is getting in everybody's way. "
Melissa Leo
Acting
Glamour
I Think
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
People
Rest
I Am
" Hire me for the next picture. I don't have to just play down-and-out trailer trash and mean, old, wicked, old nuns. I could play a princess or a queen. That's all I wanted to do. Because campaigning does go on. It's a part of selling the film. "
Melissa Leo
Picture
Me
Queen
" 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
" People often expect me to be something other than what I am. "
Melissa Leo
I Am
Something
People
" That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it. "
Melissa Leo
Secret
Actor
Acting
" More often, I'm asked to play somebody's mother, somebody's partner, somebody's wife. "
Melissa Leo
Mother
More
Wife
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
Live
Eyes
Face
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
Character
Emotions
Understand
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
Struggle
Time
Love
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
You
See
Run
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
Game
Actor
Salesman
" I'm not a particularly ambitious actress. I love to go and do my work, head down in the dirt, and be the character. "
Melissa Leo
Head
Dirt
Character
" Supporting actors are the support. You can't make a building without support. You can't buy dinner without support. "
Melissa Leo
Building
You
Without
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
Live
Alone
Yourself
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
Way
Time
Back
" My body has done for me all these years things I couldn't ever even dreamt to do for characters. It's a tool, molecularly speaking, and I need to take care of it. "
Melissa Leo
Care
Need
Take Care
" 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
Like
Everyone
Wish
" 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. "
Melissa Leo
Ask
You
Now
" Acting, it's hit or miss. Make them laugh, make them cry; hopefully they have a little entertainment. "
Melissa Leo
Entertainment
Cry
Acting
" An actor's life is fairly lonely. "
Melissa Leo
Life
Actor
Lonely