Patricia Heaton Quotes

It wasn't like a Maths test where I have to strain to get it right. I feel very close to Luna so acting her was just natural. And if I had got too nervous I'd have done terribly.

If you're a comic, you don't have a rehearsal room; you rehearse on stage. My main concern is remembering everything. I've written lots of material, but how do you memorise 90 minutes? That's one hell of a long speech. I've always had problems with that.

I was on 'SVU' for 11 years. I developed a muscle in my brain that could memorize things much more easily than people who don't do it every day. I got used to the language, and some of it got to be repetitive language, so you build your vocabulary.

I am happy with my role in 'Taxiwala.' It gave me a chance to do a character that was fun. I didn't have to agonize over every scene.

Interestingly, this character [Doctor Nash] is probably closer to me than somebody like the evil Sir Godfrey in Robin Hood or Lord Blackwood who wants to take over the world in Sherlock Holmes. This is a character that's English, he's based in London, and so it's closer to me than a lot of stuff I've been doing recently.

I prefer more of the modern stuff - just because I can associate with the imagery more.

Spouses should spend at least one full hour each day talking together about subjects that have nothing to do with their work or business. Children need at least ten minutes of face-to-face contact with their parents each day.

When you think about the person responsible for creating the character and the dialogue, Bill Monahan, who's a Boston guy, obviously, his words roll off my tongue quite nicely.

The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.

The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.

For me a film is at its best when you can start filling in the story with your own life experience.

Maybe that's partly why I'm an actor, I'm a fairly empathetic, emotional person, so I get very, very involved when it's really, really great when I'm watching - so it takes me a second to click back into reality again.

It was really cool to get to know her as a person and artist. And getting to act with her after a year of knowing her and be like, "Oh my god! There's a whole 'nother thing here!" It was really cool to be her friend and then see Ellen Page on the set.

I think the work is always going to be much better when it's important and personal to you.

Sometimes as an actor you're struggling to make things work. That was never the case for me with [Big Little Lies script]. It just kind of flowed out.

When pieces of work speak to us in a way that feels as if they were made just for us, those become our private worlds that we return to.

A lot of the time, I won't read the script until my second or third audition just 'cause a lot of the scripts are the same and the characters are the same.

It's funny, people talk about the characters they play and who do you sort of see yourself as or which ones maybe were closest to you and in some ways.

Everything you do is different, and you find different chords in every character that you play that strike true with you.

I live in New York, and Clara lives in Recife. The character is Brazilian, and as I read the script, I felt like Kleber [Mendonca] had been spying on me in order to create this role [in Aquarius]. Clara and I have different backgrounds. I come from an intuitive world, and she's an academic, but when we got together, we really became one. There are many times when I'm watching the film where Clara will say something, and I will find myself agreeing with her. It was the first time that I had this weird sensation that the character I played is so me, but yet it's so her.

You hope that the same people are coming back. I love playing with Angela [Bassett]. She's fierce. I met her years and years ago when she was a student at Yale, so to see her do these fierce roles and go on to [be] this powerhouse has just been awesome.

As an actor, I need to get excited about something that I can actually relate to.

Doing a film, or being sent scripts to look at a certain character, it's very odd for me. I tend to take it very personally.

It's not really a preparation when you know the character that you're playing. It's not too difficult. It would be more difficult the first time, I guess.

Every subject at some phase of its development should possess, what is for the individual concerned with it, an aesthetic quality.