Adapting to New Roles Quotes

Like all actors, I was open to taking on new challenges, including those outside my comfort zone.

Sometimes you have to play in a position that you may not feel is your best.

I feel excited about getting older as an actress, too. I think there are some amazing opportunities around the corner and I don't need to hold on to myself or who I was when I was 25.

The first time someone I loved left me behind...I didn't know how my family would balance. We had been such a sturdy little end table, four solid legs. I was sure we would now be off-kilter, always unstable. Until one day I looked more closely, and realized that we had simply become a stool.

Sometimes it feels weird being an actor surrounded by all these real fighters and you gotta keep your confidence high and do your best to learn it as quickly as possible.

I became a manager very young. My first sous chef job I was, maybe, 25. It was a bit too early for me. But it's on-the-job training. You really just get stuck in there and it's trial and error. You learn by your mistakes, and hopefully you don't keep making them. And if you do, you just keep trying to fix it.

Every job's a challenge. The challenge is to do it and make it look right, like you belong there - wherever that is.

A kid actor to an adult actor is a tricky one.

I don't feel that because I'm First Lady, I'm very different from what I was before. It can happen to anyone. After all, it has happened to anyone.

You'll always have to fight for what you want. Definitely crossing over and being able to tackle these grittier parts was a challenge, but I feel like I've done it! It's a whole new chapter.

Here's the thing: I come from a filmmaking background, so this concept of sort of overseeing a television show but not directing was, in general, not weird, but I had to get used to what that felt like. My initial instinct was, 'I want to direct as much of this as possible.' But the logistics of making of TV, that's just not possible.

When I was playing, it would be whatever role I wanted. Now it's whatever they ask me to do, which I kind of like better.

The thing about acting is even if you get technically more skilled at what you do, every time you begin a film or a play you're terrified. You don't know if you're going to pull it off. Every film and every story has its own set of challenges. I've never felt like, oh yeah, that's it, nailed it! You can never sit and rest. That's why it's such an exciting job. It's beginning again every time you begin again. New story, new character, new place, new time, new director. It's like moving to a different planet and trying to figure out how to live there.

I think there's an initial shedding of the skin of a character when you've played them for so long, almost like a snake losing its skin. But when a job is done, I kind of walk away from it because I know that I need to prep for whatever else I'm going onto - I need to get back to being myself, which... Who knows exactly who that is, with all the talking voices in my head. You know, back to being a bit of a blank slate again. It becomes a necessity as an actor - at least for the way that I act.

In Hollywood it's really tough to change genres; you have to re-prove yourself.

With 'Hail, Caesar!' it was about all the skill sets I had to learn, but each movie requires a different way of working. You're a piece in a new world, and there is always a difficult part within that world. For me, it's not consistent from movie-to-movie, each film has a central challenge.

I'm always changing and learning about acting, and about myself. I just hope to always keep doing that.

It's always nerve-wracking; it's like going to a new school every time you start a new movie. There are so many people and you're trying to be comfortable and vulnerable on set in order to be fearless on camera. But it's fun, it's part of the job. You've just got to be very personable, I guess.

When I was asked to make the film, I decided that it was like taking on a new career at the age of sixty-eight. I've never acted before. And taking direction is not something I'm very good at. I've always known who I am and what I was going to do, and I've always just done it.