River Phoenix Quotes

And even though people like to furrow their brow like they suspect you're not being honest about yourself, the truth is that they worry that you're not serving their idea of you.

I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else's vision of me.

I have to fight to keep my image really me... I rejected some gorgeous publicity shots because they just didn't look like me.

I don't think I'm portrayed in the media the way I really am - but then who is?

I don't want a 'good' image.

I never tried to put myself in situations where I had to be anything other than what people saw on TV.

You've got to play what people think you are, rather than what you are. You have to have a sense of what you are as you're playing what people think you are.

Everyone has an identity. One of their own, and one for show.

The only way you can truly control how you are seen is by being honest all the time.

Generally speaking, people who know me will tell you that my public persona is not that different from my private persona.

We're actors in our lives, pretendin' to be who we want people to think we are.

It is in most cases more difficult to make intelligent people believe that you are what you are not, than really to become what you would appear to be.

Everyone is insecure. I think, really, it comes from, like, a desire to want to be in control of how you're represented.

I play into the perception of me, but it's not really me.

I must be very clear in one thing... Being a pageant girl is not who I am or what defines me.

I think if you watch a lot of what I do, you're going to ultimately walk away seeing me. I can't hide - that impression is a personal impression people have of me.

We're all products of what we want to project to the world. Even people who don't spend any time, or think they don't, on preparing themselves for the world out there - I think that ultimately they have for their whole lives groomed themselves to be a certain way, to present a face to the world.

I've never tried to manipulate my image.

I am an extremely private person. I always feel that I come across as a caricature of myself whenever I do interviews.

What most people do is try to find a comfortable persona that they're in alignment with and the public likes and appreciates them for.

I think that you have to present an image that is... true to you, and... the way you would like to be perceived, so I think that through the years I've worked really hard at trying to create an image that is true to me.

I don't leave the house without thinking of how to represent myself.

People often expect me to be very serious, but it's not like my record company told me not to smile in photographs, because I was like that anyway.

I felt pressure to follow in Madonna's footsteps, and I didn't want to base my career on sex. So I began to change how I saw myself.

I have never been interested in presenting myself.