Laurie Simmons Quotes

The challenge has always been to wrest emotion out of a [doll's] face that we think of as only having one emotion. It's moving a light, moving my camera; it's just this mental investment that I make, and suddenly, everything changes. Parenthetically, I have to say, I don't particularly like dolls, nor have I ever liked them. That's something I really wanted to get out there right away.

Character and emotionality don't always have to be relegated to quieter, more simple constructs.

It's always an interesting challenge to see if you can create a character that's got emotion.

I love writing for women. The willingness to go from laughter to tears in a moment is the greatest palette you can paint with as a writer.

I tried to have more than one emotion on the record.

I want to be scary, boring, philosophical, funny, touching.

I'm not sassy all day every day. I have levels and feelings.

I suppose the cult of the strong woman character on TV has probably been misinterpreted in so many different ways, meaning that a woman can't be emotionally complicated or want things or can't be weak in moments.

An actor's job is to find variations of the same emotion in his being so that every time he expresses grief or joy, it doesn't look the same.

One must never comment as an actor, never show that a character is shallow or vindictive, but let that be conveyed. I mean, none of us thinks of ourselves as being vindictive or shallow - perhaps we should.

[On being asked, 'Did you ever say that an actress needs to be able to laugh and to cry and that when you need to laugh you think of your sex life and when you need to cry you think of your sex life?':] No.

Alas! how little can a moment show Of an eye where feeling plays In ten thousand dewy rays: A face o'er which a thousand shadows go!

I think that, when you play a mother, whether you play a bad mother or a not so great mother or an amazing mother, being a mother is already so complicated. It's already three-dimensional, automatically, no matter what the role is, because you're playing a mother.

Elijah can register such subtle emotion on his face that I loved doing close-ups on him. He really brings a superb emotional level to Frodo's scenes and although he is a very instinctive actor, we discussed the character thoroughly.

I think what I find challenging is just trying to bring a truthfulness and a realism to a character.

And I hope you will not think me foolish when I also extend my thanks. Thank you, Michael, for letting my son love her first. —from Janet Stirling, dowager Countess of Kilmartin, to Michael Stirling, Earl of Kilmartin

Never say never - and I certainly don't judge anyone who does it. But most of the characters I play are going through some kind of emotional turmoil, so my job requires me to have expression. If my face was froze, what right do I have to play that part? All the women who haven't done anything to their faces are still able to play great roles. And some of the ones who have done something have messed it up - they look freakish. Anyway, for me it's about playing women with rich lives - and the longer the life, the deeper the wrinkles.

The novelist is the person who spends a lot of his or her day thinking about the human drama and emotional complexity.

I think the thing that I love the most about working in the digital cinema is that you're only limited in your cinematic technique by your imagination - you're not restricted by the physical laws of nature. You don't have to worry about physically moving a 50lb camera through space, or worry about shadows and rigging.

I think a lot of people become actors because they have a great reservoir and repertoire of many different emotions they felt over their lives. It's like having a toolbox, and you go down into the toolbox and choose one or two of those that you need for a particular scenario, or something that comes up in a line.

I think it's one of the nicest privileges as an actor is to know that you can move people in one moment, make them think about their lives, or make them laugh or make them cry or make them understand something. Or just make them feel something because I think so many of us, including myself, spend too much time not feeling enough, you know?

I've done a number of films. I've been around this. I think the biggest challenge is just getting the script right, the way that you want the script to be. It's really about capturing the complexity of emotions and creating the kind of characters that people will want to watch every week.

The mature person becomes able to differentiate feelings into as many nuances, strong and passionate experiences, or delicate and sensitive ones, as in the different passages of music in a symphony. Unfortunately, many of us have feelings limited like notes in a bugle call.

I knew it was going to be important that if I had an audience understand who she was, then all those things had to come from a place that was grounded, as opposed to being tics and manners and twitches. I didn't think it was going to be as rich, perhaps, as if I was going to make it more emotional.

I still don't know how to express the really delicate personal stuff. People think that Plastic Ono is very personal, but there are some subtleties of emotions which I cannot seem to express in pop music, and it frustrates me. Maybe that's why I still search for other ways of expressing myself. Song writing is a limiting experience in some ways - writing down words that have to rhyme.