Jennifer Jason Leigh Quotes

Pain is pain, joy is joy - you can't avoid bringing pieces of yourself into a role.

When I'm on stage, and when I'm comfortable or uncomfortable, I have sort of a knee-jerk reaction to try to make people laugh. It's my version of a handshake to show that I want to make a connection and to show what I'm truly like. It's kind of my statement like, "This is what I'm really like. I'd like you to love me."

Weirdly enough, I don't like to pretend. I try to use things in me, and translate them into the situation and the characters, so it always needs to run through my own veins.

Everything I've written is personal - it's the only way I know how to write.

I use myself for each part. Naturally, it's my body, it's my soul, it's my feelings. That's the only way I know how to work. I couldn't pretend.

An actor can change himself to fit a part, whereas a personality has to change the part to fit himself. The personality has to say it his own way.

I think you always have to use certain parts of yourself in any role.

All you have to offer as a performer is yourself.

With any character, you have to put part of yourself into it because we are the soul that brings that character to life.

I have the confidence that I can take anybody and have them give a good performance, because I don't think there's anything to acting except expressing, being able to converse. So if I can just convince somebody not to clean themselves up, and not to be someone that they're not, and just be what they are in given circumstances, that's all that acting is to me, and I don't think it's very difficult.

I don't know how to put on an act; I always show myself for what I am, in whatever mood I'm in.

I'm interested in taking things from my relationship that I don't see on screen - or that I feel like that could be useful or helpful if it were out in the open - and trying to put that in the movies as much as possible.

I was never trying to be the voice for anybody else. I was just trying to sing about what I was going through, and was singing about those things specifically because I knew there was an audience not being served.

I feel like any role that I play is a little piece of me.

I’m not trying to satisfy anybody but myself and the role that I’m playing.

The whole point about vision is that it's very individual, it's very personal, and it has to be confessional. It has to be something which hurts - the pulling out of it and putting it on the page hurts. Art can be about the individual writer's response to his or her condition, and if that response comes out of a predigested belief about what the audience wants to hear about the writer's condition, then it has no truth, it has no validity. You either write with your own blood or nobody's. Otherwise it's just ink.

Writing songs is super intimate. It's a bit like getting naked.

I started writing songs by myself. That always came from whatever I was feeling and being honest about that because I never had any intention of anyone ever hearing them.

I can't play anything until I find something that connects to my life, something I can carry as my secret map or code for the character.

I love acting it's apart of me and I try to put a little bit of myself in each of my roles.

With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it's just not acting. It's lying.

Everything I do - if I do it, is going to be personal.

When you play a character, there's always a part of you. Like, you always bring out a side of you when you do another character.

There's something about YouTube, where you're not being anybody but yourself. You have the opportunity to start as yourself from the very beginning. From the very first video, you choose what you say, and you choose what's right and wrong for your presentation of yourself.

A rapper is about being completely true to yourself. Being an actor is about changing who you are.