Kelli O'Hara Quotes

When I hear that a project takes place out of town, the material better be terrific, and it has to come at the right time. My kids are getting older, so it's getting easier, but being a mother - it's a difficult thing to juggle.

Playing the lead in a film where you shoot for three months away from home is not an easy thing for me when my children are in school and my husband is running a theatre company.

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.

One of the reasons I didn't really want to do TV earlier in my career was because it is so life-consuming, and I wanted to spend time with my kids and be a mother.

I wanted to stay on TV because I've got kids who are school-aged, so I get to see them most days as opposed to going away for movies months and months at a time.

I always feel like I want more time with my kids. But I reject the notion that you can't have it all. I think you can: just not necessarily in abundance.

I am a hands-on mother, so I take long gaps between films.

I would love to coach and teach people about football. It's just that the time constraints are so tough to coach, especially when you have seven kids and they are growing up. I'm just in too blessed of a situation to spend from five in the morning until 12 at night coaching and not watching my kids grow up.

I feel so blessed that I have a job where I can spend long periods of time with my family. Most moms don't have that choice. But wearing so many hats - mother, wife, actress - does take hard work; you always have to be thinking about your family's best interests.

When you're shooting a film, you really don't get to be a dad, and you don't really get to be a husband. You don't really exist at all. But I do drag my family with me on location whenever I can.

My first job now is as a mother, everything else is secondary. My kids understand that I am an actress, and they are always so surprised to hear my voice on a cartoon character, or see my face on a video box. If it ever gets to be too much though, the career and the kids, I will simply set the career aside.

My sons are precious to me and I have tried incredibly hard to strike the right balance between work and home life while being acutely aware that I haven't always got it right.

I'm taking one thing at a time. With the children and launching my solo career it would drive me to a nervous breakdown if I tried to organise a wedding on top of that.

When the children were little, I'd fly into L.A. for a specific work project, but then I'd leave again, and when I was home, I wouldn't even read a script.

I have two kids, career and I travel, and I don't think my life is any different than most couples. The most valuable commodity now for many people is time and how to parcel that out.

I love, love, love being an actor - it's still the hardest and scariest thing I do, outside of parenting. But I've always been someone who likes a busy day.

There are hours when I must force the novel out of my mind and be interested in the children.

I love acting, but I have two little kids, and it's 14 hours a day out of the house. You don't get that time back.

It's hard for anybody who works a lot and has children. But I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I can't cultivate a relationship with my child if it's between takes. I tried that on a movie and realized, 'This is not going to work.' It will work some of the year, but not 12 months a year.

I know that in order to be considered successful, you're supposed to do two or three movies a year. I only work once every year-and-a-half, sometimes two years. I have children to raise.

I work, and then whenever I have any other time, I'm with my daughter, and then I go to sleep. I think you basically have to abandon the dreams of having any other adult activities in your life. You have to go to sleep whenever your child goes to sleep. That's basically how we're doing it.

When you're a kid, I think you want to be a film star. And I'm not as enamoured with that any more. The reality of that life is a lot of travel, and a lot of being away, which is impractical because I have four children, so I don't want to be away that much, not the other side of the world away.

To have kids and not be there every night is tough.

I'm one of those actresses that really enjoys staying home with my children. To be told you've got to get to work, it is just unbelievable what it does to you.