Sigourney Weaver Quotes

It's easier to write about heartbreak after you've had your heart broken. You have more material to draw from, you can extrapolate from your own experiences and make reasonable assumptions about how your characters would feel and act.

I like unformed characters. This may be because, no matter how old I get, I am still unformed myself.

At a certain age you start becoming brave enough to reveal yourself and it's the revealing of who you are that enables you to dig deeper into different characters. You'll get to a point where you can say: 'I can relate to that', 'I know that', 'I don't have to make that up' and that resonates with people in the audience who can tell that you've been there.

As an actor and as a person you come together with being in familiar territory although that has not been my whole life. That's been a part of it. I think a lot of people associate me with the west because of Sundance.

I like to do on screen what I'm not in life. In life, I'm much more weak and insecure, and so then you know I like to play characters that are stronger than me.

I have a lot of real life experience that I can draw on. And I think that shows in the characters that I play because I'm always trying to find somebody - or find characters to play that I can identify with on a personal level or relate to. And I think it makes for a little bit more of an honest portrayal.

Everyone is usually screwed up in some way and that is usually where the work comes in - figuring out how to make it believable and make it real to present someone's problems that you don't necessarily actually know anything about.

If I'm honest about the people that I love, then I need my characters to live through the same things that the people I love and care about are living with and struggling with.

With acting, it wouldn't be about money: it would be about taking my life experiences and using them to create art.

For me, it is important to pick up characters which I can relate to. Or I recall an incident in my life or tap into my innermost emotions and try to bring that reality on to the screen.

I'm still conscious of whether people really accept me, but that insecurity makes me stronger.

I'm a very real person that has overcome a lot, so I think I'm relatable.

The great thing about playing a character that's similar to the audience, or similar to you, is that you get to have the same reaction that you would actually have to whatever's going on.

It's fun to play somebody who's kind of struggling.

I think one of my big skills is making unlikable characters likable or real in some way. No matter how hateful people are, there's always something vulnerable about them, or something that you can understand or relate to. I think that's my job as an actress - to find those.

How as an actress are you meant to inhabit other people if you haven't lived? How are you meant to play someone who gets the bus to work or has a part-time job or whatever if I've never experienced any of it myself or if I haven't been to school? How does that make me someone that people can relate to? I don't think it's possible really.

I always knew that I could go deep. How deep? I don't know. But it always seems that with each character I take on, I'm challenged to go deeper than the last time, and then again deeper than the last time. This is the deepest I've ever been asked to dive. And to see how deep I actually went for this, and that I wasn't afraid to go there in order to give Tyler exactly what he envisioned for the character, which was pretty deep, that's what I discovered about myself.

No matter what character your play. I feel like whenever anyone is honest and whole and well-written, you're going to be able to connect to that person because we're all kinda made up of the same stuff and I think that's always one of the really powerful things about approaching each individual character and role and film.

I hate mirrors; every time I look in one I see things that could be improved. If I could give my younger self any advice it would be: ‘Take a deep breath, the world is not ending – and do something with your hair.’ I had the same haircut from when I was a toddler all the way through high school, it was this weird side-parting. I didn’t like change.

That's what acting is all about - it's all about bringing truth from your own life, and putting it into your characters. If you have the advantage of using your own life in your work, that's always the way to go.

Defeats and failures are great developers of character. They have made the giants of our race by giving Titanic muscles, brawny sinews, and far-reaching intellects.

There is a part of me that is desperately wanting to not necessarily be this cute, endearing, heart-on-his-sleeve type of character that just wants to be liked.

A lot of the turning points happen in high school and in college, and it defines a lot of how you see the world and how you decide to defend yourself from the world. Some people - their defense mechanism is, I'm really smart or I'm sexy or I'm the leader. And other people - they hide or they make jokes.

If you're writing about a character, if he's a powerful character, unless you give him vulnerability I don't think he'll be as interesting to the reader.

When you write a character and their dialogue, you can't help imagining how you would be acting if you were them. You kind of have to relate to all of them. It's the most personal thing I've ever done.