Jackie Chan Quotes

It's easier to act in your own accent.

I'm always aware that there are, broadly speaking, two different ways to act: there is acting, and then there's being, and I'm always more interested in that.

For the first six months of my stand-up career, I was talking like Danny Dyer. I was doing a lot of 'alright guvnors?' It wasn't true to who I was.

I'm against the ways of the world where people feel like they need to always make things too perfect.

So many people are concerned with being the perfect 'something.' Whether it's the perfect singer, the perfect sexy girl, or the perfect feminist. I don't want to be the perfect anything.

I was a working-class kid from Boston. But I never lost my accent because I felt like that was what I was doing. I didn't have to perform Woody Guthrie like Bob Dylan did in the '60s, I just had to make myself be Eileen Myles and let that be my shield.

The reason I stopped modeling was because I was not pleased with trying to portray something that is impossible to reach. Even when I do photo shoots now for films, I am just not interested in trying to look my best all the time anymore. That pursuit of an impossible perfection seems ridiculous to me now. I would rather show my vulnerabilities or my doubts than try to be something that no one is.

I don't try to do anything. I think the moment that I'm like, "Oh, I have to be this way or that way" is the moment that I become sad, or maybe an asshole. So I just try to be myself and put out what is most natural. But I think I am - I mean, I've seen a lot, been through a lot. But something remains sort of naïve within me. And I just try to nurture that.

I've learned that it's harder to try to put on this goody two-shoes persona when that's not me.

I haven't been trying to be anything other than myself.

Don't try so hard to fit in, and certainly don't try so hard to be different just try hard to be you.

To be creative and spontaneous, you have to live with imperfection.

What I find difficult about photo shoots is the line between playing a character - you're being asked by the photographer to take on a role like you would in a movie - and being a fancier version of yourself. It's about finding that line between being spontaneous and open to direction, but also trying to explain to photographers that the "me" is often taken out of context because it has all of this other stuff attached to it.

The problem is that if you're self-conscious about being a person on whom nothing is lost, isn't something lost - some kind of presence? You're distracted by trying to be totally, perfectly impressionable.

There's not swelling music and emotional scenes in life, and there's not long pauses when you tell a joke for everybody to laugh. That's not how it goes. Life just sort of happens to you.

I'm a 'What you see is what I want you to see' kind of girl . . . When I first started, I just wanted to be perfect. I wanted to say I loved bunnies and rainbows and world peace. I realized that the only way to be perfect was to embrace your imperfections.

I’ve always thought you are what you are and you shouldn’t pretend to be anyone else. But Oliver used to correct me and explain that you are whoever it is you’re pretending to be.

Style, personality - deliberately adopted and therefore a mask - is the only escape from the hot-faced bargainers and money-changers.

Don't try so much to form your character - it's like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose. Live as you like best and your character will take care of itself.

When I try to sound like the contemporary sound, it never turns out that way. That's just me.

At times, I come across as crude or crass, that irritates you when I come across like a Neanderthal or a babbling idiot at times. But I like to be that person. I like to show you all that person because that's who you come to see.

A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.

I am a black woman poet and I sound like one.

Every ethnic group has this where people within it will try and tell each other how they should be. So what I would say to other people is to just embrace who you are because you will become instantly happier.