Melissa Leo Quotes

You know, when I got started on television in the ’80s, you would go to the costume department, and if you were a female they put you into a skirt. And you had a pocketbook, usually a shoulder bag.

Well, I don’t think of myself as a feminist at all. As soon as we start labeling and categorizing ourselves and others, that’s going to shut down the world.

To play someone when the character masks their own emotions, doesn’t understand their own emotions, has no release for their own emotions, and yet is full of emotion – that is a much harder character to play than someone who has somewhere to put it.

To get the hippie out of certain characters is probably the most difficult thing for me. I was not a hippie by choice but by birth.

Through all of this lovely interviewing, and nice things people say, and the rest of it, I have learned that I am an actor. That is my profession. That is my job. That is how I make a living. So I am just out there making a living.

The key to acting has much more to do with listening than with talking.