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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Annette Bening Quotes

I wanted to be a classical actress. I plodded along. I went to junior college in San Francisco, I was in a Repertory Company. My hero was Eva Le Gallienne, who was a great theater actress at the turn of the century who created her own company, and she wrote these hilarious autobiographies at the time.

– Annette Bening

I didn’t do a movie until I was almost 30. I’m grateful for that because it gave me a chance to be an adult in the world and do work in the regional theater that very few people cared about. I loved it and I wanted to do that stuff.

– Annette Bening

I like things that I feel comfortable in.

– Annette Bening

Oh, honey, I’m from Oklahoma! This is who I am – middle-class all the way!

– Annette Bening

I remember hearing someone say that good acting is more about taking off a mask than putting one on, and in movie acting, certainly that’s true. With the camera so close, you can see right down into your soul, hopefully. So being able to do that in a way is terrifying, and in another way, truly liberating. And I like that about it.

– Annette Bening

We all perform our lives in a way. And the actor is a perfect metaphor to get at that theme of ‘how do we find our authentic selves?’ And that we all – whether we’re actors or not – perform ourselves. As a way of searching. As a way of fumbling around and trying to say, is this my voice? Is this who I am?

– Annette Bening

Critics have a responsibility to put things in a cultural and sociological or political context. That is important.

– Annette Bening

I have perfected the art of putting my feet on my husband’s lap during awards ceremonies so he can rub them.

– Annette Bening

When I started in the theater, I’d do plays by Shakespeare or Ibsen or Chekhov, and they all created great women’s roles.

– Annette Bening

Five billion people have played Hamlet. ‘To be or not to be.’ And how do you do that and find your way into your own journey, your own way of telling it?

– Annette Bening

Getting all dressed up and putting on fancy clothes – all of that’s a great thing, but oddly, it doesn’t really have a lot to do with acting most of the time.

– Annette Bening

When I started, I was a theater actress, and there were roles that I couldn’t imagine not playing, like Rosalind in ‘As You Like It.’ I used to think I would die if I could play that. But then I started doing movies, and I had children, and I moved to Los Angeles. And now I kind of can’t remember what those roles would be.

– Annette Bening

Having a life outside of movies is like pure oxygen. It makes the work more precious and informed.

– Annette Bening

And if there’s anything movies can do in a way that I just love, and I love as an audience is, ‘Show me something I don’t know about. Show me something I haven’t seen.’

– Annette Bening

It used to be the one or the other, right? You were the ‘bad girl’ or the ‘good girl’ or the ‘bad mother’ or ‘the good mother,’ ‘the horrible businesswoman who eschewed her children’ or ‘the earth mother who was happy to be at home baking pies,’ all of that stuff that we sort of knew was a lie.

– Annette Bening

I like that I’ve been through things, that when something happens, it resonates with something that already happened. It’s not that things like loss are more or less painful. But they’re deeper. I find that fascinating.

– Annette Bening

Somebody said something really smart: It’s like you end up being the defense attorney for your role. Your job is to defend their point of view. You’re fighting for what they want. You learn that in acting school – it’s Acting 1A: ‘What do you want? What’s in the way?’

– Annette Bening

I don’t see myself as competing with other actresses. I mean, I went through a time when I was in New York, and I was going to lots of auditions and trying to get parts, but even then, you’re not really competing with the other actresses. There is a competition going on, but it’s not like something you can win in that way.

– Annette Bening

What makes us love a character is a character that tries.

– Annette Bening

I don’t see myself as having to compete with younger actresses; I don’t feel that.

– Annette Bening

I saw a Shakespeare play when I was – I guess I was in junior high. And I just fell in love with the theater because, for me, it was a combination of big ideas and feeling.

– Annette Bening

I think what’s interesting about the whole paparazzi thing is that unless you’re Brad Pitt or Madonna, you can pretty much avoid it. You know when you’re going to an opening that you will be photographed, so that’s fine. And you know the restaurants that have paparazzi, so you don’t go to them.

– Annette Bening

Anybody who has children and children who are well feels a sense of responsibility towards parents and kids and families that are struggling and that aren’t well.

– Annette Bening

Find the story you want to tell. If you don’t want to write it, find somebody to write it.

– Annette Bening

The tension I feel is the moment they say, ‘Action!’ Movies are like lightning in a bottle, and you always want to find when you possibly can catch a surprising moment.

– Annette Bening

When I watch my kids, and I see the primal level at which the sibling relationships are formed, then I completely understand what these unresolved adult sibling problems are based on. You know, ‘Mom liked you better’ and, ‘You got your own room and I didn’t.’

– Annette Bening

Most women would say they relate to ‘Hedda Gabler’ – there’s a part of her in them. Ibsen was writing about a deep ambivalence that many women feel about domesticity. I think about myself and friends of mine – we have some of Hedda’s qualities and traits.

– Annette Bening

I read ‘Game Change.’ If you want to relive the campaign, that book is unbelievable. It’s great. It’s the book of that campaign. It brought all the memories back of everything with Clinton and Obama, and Sarah Palin and McCain, and choosing her, and John Edwards. It was an interesting book.

– Annette Bening

I find the reality of our emotional lives interesting.

– Annette Bening

I am in awe of Ruth Draper.

– Annette Bening

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