Nora Ephron Quotes

Not to compare an actor to a painter, but you can go through different phases and still be the same artist, y'know?

I think the first thing is to recognize that there is an ebb and flow to your career. There are going to be moments that are really high, and then you're going to have moments where you step away for a little bit, and maybe that's just by choice or maybe you have a family.

I was a magazine illustrator for many years before I became an actor, and I used to think, 'Oh, God, all those wasted years!' But now I think it's just been one big enterprise of illustrating. I used to do it with colored pencils, and now I do it with this voice and this set of limbs.

One reason Cassavetes is a hero to me is that his movies grew with him; they reflected the stages of his life. He made movies about where he was at that time. That's what I want to do with my films.

As an artist, you want to have an experience. What you need to experience changes over the course of your life because your life changes.

Just coming to terms with the fact that I got to play April Wheeler [Revolutionary Road] and Hanna Schmitz [The Reader] in one year, let alone in my lifetime. I'm very, very aware of how rare that is as an opportunity for any one person. I can't tell you how much I've been able to take away from these experiences creatively. I really, really learned so much about acting, about myself... all of those things. It's difficult to talk about the actor's process without sounding like an arrogant asshole but they really were very challenging.

All my life I've worked and I was so lucky to go from a radio station in Washington to the Dodgers and of course, it never stopped. For me to suddenly put the key in the ignition and turn the engine off, it's kind of a frightening thought. I put the key in and left it there, God willing, for another year.

A couple years in [to acting], I recognized that I developed methods from being a stuntwoman for so long that worked for me that I wasn't aware of. And I had to become aware of them, because I didn't recognize that I could actually apply them across the board.

My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get ideas you have to turn down - 'I'm sorry, no longer'; 'I'm sorry, not yet.

I became an actor kind of by accident. I was in musical theater and I got a job as an actor in a play and kept going. But I never set out to be an actor; it happened over time.

Being a musician, being a person who's playing tours and making records is a part-time thing for me at age. I did it, I lived it and I breathed it every day of my life for 30-odd years and now I am slowing down a little bit. But it does not mean that I am any less intense and dedicated to the work that I am doing now. I have other priorities in life as well.

You think you're developing and getting better and then you see something you did years ago. Looking at your early work.. sometimes it has a depth that surprises you.

I've been active all my life. In 1990 I retired from my firm, I.M. Pei & Partners, and for two years I didn't do much. Then I started to get kind of antsy, so I decided, I'm going to do some more work. And I chose to do work outside the U.S. because I've spent 45 years here and I wanted to learn more about what's happening in the rest of the world.

I was in a business for years where the stylist styled me, and I was wearing things from other designers. I was just there to be a conduit to those things. To be lucky enough to be embraced, having branched out from being a model, has been the greatest gift ever.

We haven't been on the same page in years. It is what it is. Sometimes that match burns out. So, no, I don't feel bad about it. It's good. I'm grateful for everything we have done throughout our careers and if there's nothing else to put out, then there's nothing to put out. I'm constantly writing and working. It doesn't stop there.

I've been very lucky. I've had three separate careers: freelance illustrator, then set designer, puppetteer and animator, and now fine artist. I just bluffed my way into every one of 'em!

Actually the years when I was playing totally un - well, they were just roles that just went by the board, you wouldn't want to know. But anyway, I'm glad I had that chance to build my craft.

If you go with the principle, you should go with the principle. If I really saw the subject very differently than ten years ago, I would have done a different movie.

I was on Stargate: Atlantis for four years, playing a similar character called Ronon, who was an alien that didn't say much and grunted. I've been there and done that. Whether people have seen it or not, you want to stretch. And then, while I waited, I got The Red Road, and I'd never gotten anything like that.

Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.

Every time you make a movie it's a new and different experience. You learn very little from the past. So, I'm a little bit better than I was when I first started.

Working was a new thing; waking up early in the morning and going to bed late at night... But I’ve met a lot of nice people, I've been to New York, London, Paris. I like traveling. Now I cannot imagine my life without modeling.

Beware of using up your last forty years in being the curator of your first fifty.

In college, I thought I wanted to be solely an artist, and then when I got here, to college, I was like, "Okay, well I want to be a songwriter," 'cause it was like close to Nashville.

So learning to play a new instrument, learning a new language - those sorts of things will pay dividends for years or decades to come.