Laura Benanti Quotes

I was giving a speech one time, and the woman who introduced me said, 'Well, she used to be J. D. Salinger's girlfriend. I thought, 'God, is that all I've been?' I didn't want to be reduced to that.

I was really proud that I was named after Thomas Edison and wanted to be called Edson. I thought Pele sounded horrible. It was a rubbish name. Edson sounded so much more serious and important.

I hope that I'm not simply defined by 'The X-Files,' and I hope I have more work that is important to do.

I'm a different person. I don't want to be titled as Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain's daughter. I want to be thought of as Frances Cobain.

There are a lot of people who don't know me and what I am all about.

I've spent the better part of two decades running both toward and away from an image - the Hollywood image - that had come to define me.

That image of who I was publicly was so solidified. You're that person. And it wasn't even close to a true representation of where I was in my life.

In a way, you kind of get caught up in whatever image of yourself you think is out there.

I'm always interested in how people, myself included, have ideas of themselves, of how they thought they would be, or of how they want to be seen. And the older you get, the world keeps telling you different things about yourself. And how people either adjust to those things and let go of adolescent notions. Or they dig in deeper.

There was a period when I had a hard time reconciling all the different parts of me in a way that I thought would make sense to others.

Being famous hasn't changed my perception of myself - I've just grown up.

I choose parts because I don't want to be embarrassed when the movie comes out. What if my friends were to see the movie? What if my niece or nephew wandered into the theater and saw the movie? I don't want to be too ashamed of it.

I don't want to be remembered as 'the son of Bruce Lee'.

When people think of me initially, they remember me as 'Akeelah.' Sometimes it can be frustrating to be remembered at an age that you've outgrown.

It was good because it helped me get where I'm at today, but then people stereotype and say we don't want to use her because she's known as the 'Wonderbra girl'.

I have a photograph of myself when I was 2 years of age, and I don't recognize the person in the photograph. She doesn't look anything like me, and I can't find any trace of her in me physically. And yet I remember her very, very well - even her anxiety.

Your name is a funny thing. It stands for what you're about, and everything I do is really about pride.

You're looking at a different me than I'm looking at.

I really want to be known for my work. That sounds like such a... cliche, and I've thought about how else I can say it to make it sound less hackneyed. But that's what it comes down to... I know people are interested in these things.

I suppose I sometimes used to act like I wasn't a human being... Sometimes I look back at myself and remember things I used to say, or my hairstyle, and I cringe.

I am a collection of thoughts and memories and likes and dislikes. I am the things that have happened to me and the sum of everything I've ever done. I am the clothes I wear on my back. I am every place and every person and every object I have ever come across. I am a bag of bones stuck to a very large rock spinning a thousand miles an hour.

People say, 'What if your name was Niki Smith?' Well, if Niki Smith lived the life I've lived, it would have great bearing.

I needed to find my own worth and shake the image after having done 'Showgirls' at age 21.

But I always see myself as the filmmaker. I wonder if everybody else sees me more as an actor.

I don't want to become known as just a body.