Tracy Pollan Quotes

The best characters to play are the ones who have deep internal conflict.

To me, any character that is conflicted inside as well as outside of themselves is always a better role to play.

Loki in 'Thor' is the most incredible springboard into a sort of excavation of the darker aspects of human nature. So that was thrilling, coming back knowing that I'd built the boat and now I could set sail into choppier waters.

It's always appealing to play a character that has to overcome himself as well as an obstacle. It makes the drama so much deeper.

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 devilish, thorny, dirty, mean roles, muck and mire, unbelievably sad, unbelievably happy, burdened. Inner conflict - that's where drama is.

What I like writing about are people's relationships, not necessarily great big dramatic things but the smaller things in life and how they affect characters and challenge and change the people that they are. I do like a happy ending, so my books have to have a happy ending.

I want to read about a character doing something fairly quiet where I can picture who the character is, and what their attitude towards the world is - which I'm a lot more interested in than what they do under the pressure of a gunfight.

The movies and TV shows I like to watch tend to put their characters in situations where they have to dig deeper.

Being an actor sometimes requires that you ask yourself questions you'd rather not know the answers to.

I dig those kinds of roles where I have to dig down and find some internal motivation. I like tough roles.

For each character, I try to understand what is driving them.

First I was 'angry,' then 'spiritual.' Now I don't know what I am.

Through the process of specifically writing this memoir, there was so much reckoning that I had to do. It was very difficult. It doesn't erase anything that happened, but I think that it was healthy for me to do it. The teenage self-loathing that I suffered from all of a sudden found itself turned into rapids with my grief after my brother died. I turned it inwards. In the same way that my mom processes her grief and her problems. This project, as a memoir, has helped me funnel it outwards.

I love characters that are going through turmoil. To be honest, I love characters with conflict. I love characters who are really going through an emotional journey; whether it's a super-dark-crazy journey or a really relatable guy.

So that's what I'm here to become. And suddenly, this word fills me with a brand of sadness I haven't felt since childhood. The kind of sadness you feel at the end of summer. When the fireflies are gone, the ponds have dried up and the plants are wilted, weary from being so green.

Although my stories are all very different on the surface, I like to write stories about characters struggling with big problems. I'm always reminded, no matter how different from me one of my characters is from me on the surface, how we're all pretty much the same underneath.

To play a role where you get to reveal intellectual change is wonderful.

I think of 'Liar & Spy' as completely different and actually not at all like a 'When You Reach Me'-type story. I feel like 'Liar & Spy' has a much quieter, more emotional revelation.

Pippin chooses love and finds a greater sense of himself at the end of all the madness. I relate to him in many ways. I have been through stuff, thought I knew best, and often been proven wrong.

I enjoy heroines who grow and come into their own during the course of a story.

I think that 'City of Heavenly Fire' is definitely a book where all the characters are tested to their limits, and they have to make really significant choices about who they are and who they wanna be.

I prefer playing characters that are going through turmoil. Most movie characters are just in service to the story.

The hardest role that I've ever tried to play was Clara Johnson in 'Light in the Piazza' at Lincoln Center. It was the least fun I've ever had, but the most beautiful experience I've ever had. I could not understand her. I could not put my feet in her shoes. I came home every night, and I was depressed.

I have written only what I have thought through, felt through and suffered through.