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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Lorraine Toussaint Quotes

I love to see how a character unfolds off the page in a project. I don’t always know how the character is going to turn out, even with the script being there. It’s not always clear where that character is going to take me. Or where I will take them.

– Lorraine Toussaint

My job as an actor is to cover and expose in varying allowance that – so that the audience can peek through the window to the people I create.

– Lorraine Toussaint

Pretend and real are all real to a psychopath.

– Lorraine Toussaint

I hope that whenever my daughter has a negative experience, I’m there to talk about it and remind her how we feel when it’s done to her so that she doesn’t do it to others.

– Lorraine Toussaint

How well I walk my talk, and not talk my talk, determines the quality of my engagement, of all my experience with what is quite personally my God. I’m my greatest teacher, and within me, I have the power to push myself deeper and higher.

– Lorraine Toussaint

People’s faith, people’s beliefs are such a personal thing, and it defies definition. I’m so rarely interested in discussing what I believe or what you believe. I think it’s liquid, anyway.

– Lorraine Toussaint

I grew up a middle class, colonized child of teachers and librarians and people, women especially, who treasured education.

– Lorraine Toussaint

I’ve become very fond of the law. I’ve always been an advocate for justice, which occasionally the law brings to light.

– Lorraine Toussaint

I meditate. I’ve been a meditator since, I think I was doing it unofficially before all my life and then began to formalize it somewhere around 14.

– Lorraine Toussaint

I don’t think anyone would disagree with this: You are self-directed in daytime, and that’s it. So come with it, and bring it on the first take.

– Lorraine Toussaint

We actors are superstitious creatures. We do all the homework, and we put all of the components together, but there’s always one key aspect that we’re not in charge of, really, and that’s magic. You are always on the lookout for where and how that magic is going to ignite.

– Lorraine Toussaint

I know what it was like to not have a voice, so my daughter has a voice. I veto that voice when needed because at the end of the day I am the grown-up, but I hear her.

– Lorraine Toussaint

When you’re playing a real character, you want to honor that person and receive inspiration from that person. They need to anoint you in some way that allows you to borrow just a small piece of their soul. That is the flame.

– Lorraine Toussaint

Anything you need, you can get on YouTube. It’s wacky.

– Lorraine Toussaint

I grew up under the British system, which I think is horrific for children – very, very strict – a system that did not recognize children as being individuals. You were small animals earning the right to be human.

– Lorraine Toussaint

We all have a dark side. Most of us go through life avoiding direct confrontation with that aspect of ourselves, which I call the shadow self. There’s a reason why. It carries a great deal of energy.

– Lorraine Toussaint

I find I often do my best work when I’m not attached to the outcome of the audition.

– Lorraine Toussaint

I was born odd. I was a strange child. My grandmother was always praying over me. She was always rubbing me and praying over me.

– Lorraine Toussaint

As a modern woman, there are things I take for granted, and that shows up in the way I sit, the way I walk, the way I think, and what I know to be possible.

– Lorraine Toussaint

I have a big life, a small child, I work, I do a lot of things, so I’m often playing catch-up with what’s current.

– Lorraine Toussaint

I keep waiting for someone to cast me as the angel or the witch or the immortal of some kind because so much of the reading I do for my own pleasure is fantasy, horror, or sci-fi.

– Lorraine Toussaint

Sometimes the character will go into a completely different direction than I expected once the cameras start rolling. That’s what I love about what I do.

– Lorraine Toussaint

When you eliminate vanity from an art form, and I would think that this would be any art form, what is left is an opportunity to be incredibly naked and truthful.

– Lorraine Toussaint

‘Body of Proof’ was interesting because… I didn’t feel I needed to prove anything in that audition. I didn’t over-prepare it, but I was just very relaxed in it.

– Lorraine Toussaint

Once I’m on set, the only thing I’m really interested in is being in the room. Being present. And trusting that what I’ve done is sufficient, and I’m also trusting that I’ve also left room for magic.

– Lorraine Toussaint

I think if I weren’t an actress, I might have made a halfway decent attorney! I like the way they think.

– Lorraine Toussaint