Kathryn Bigelow Quotes

The story line was done in a way that's organic and was doled out very slowly in little bites. We think that's authentic for this character, that her feelings are very deeply buried or she never felt them.

I think I am more attracted to characters with a subtext, whatever that is and they don't necessarily have to be virtuous, but they have to at least be human.

I love playing confused, broken characters.

I'm always looking for complicated characters in fiction about whom I can feel a dozen feelings at once - in the space of a single paragraph, even.

You're trying to bring an emotional and psychological reality to a character that's on the page and make them three-dimensional.

Every time you play a bad girl or guy in a movie, you really come from a place of pain.

We're all complex human beings, and if some of that complexity shows through, I think it's advantageous for the movie.

Mostly what I try to do is build emotion. Only I'd prefer not to do it by telling you about emotion but by pushing that emotion down.

I guess I'm just good at playing repressed individuals. I'm lucky because those are often the roles that catch people's eyes.

The complexity of the emotional life of the play is what you live to work on.

As an actor, what's interesting is what's hidden away beneath the surface. You want to be like a duck on a pond - very calm on the surface but paddling away like crazy underneath.

I like being able to play women that are growing or aren't easy to love. Maybe they are really likable, but they're annoying because they're not tapping into who they're suppose to be. You're watching them, and you're like, 'Oh, why does she keep making this decision?'

I like the idea of a record being more than one thing emotionally - human beings go through so many emotions in one day - and I like those things sitting next to each other.

I'm very drawn to the human condition and the emotional aspects of stories. It's what's not on the page that I get excited about.

It was new to play a woman who plays with her sincerity, and who is a seductress, a manipulator and a liar! I was able to compose a character as opposed to being very natural, so it was very interesting for me. It was great to realise that I could be this kind of real woman!

I love writing for women. The willingness to go from laughter to tears in a moment is the greatest palette you can paint with as a writer.

Portraying emotionally ill characters gives me the chance to really act.

I am attracted to the complexities and deeper truths of characters, and I can't name a favourite role any more than I can name a favourite food!

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.

Those things interest me a lot in songwriting - the human nature of how people think, and the muck that we wind up in.

Clearly, I'm drawn to characters with inner conflicts.

I don't mind a little Sturm und Drang. When I was doing 'Riding in Cars With Boys,' I wouldn't smile at anybody, because my character, Bev, was angry at the world. I'm the opposite. Inside my head I'd be like, God, I'll explain to you at the end of shooting that I'm not this person.

Words are impotent to describe certain emotions.

Plot is a framework on which to drape other things. So once that's working, I can just let it go and do all the stuff that I love - 'Trojan horse' it. There are so many great YA heroines, and that's fantastic, but what about the emotionally complex boy out there? That's who I tend to write about.

Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?