Annette Bening

“We still want to idealize moms, and sometimes we want to idealize actresses who are moms, too. I know that's something I've experienced, but we're all just doing the best we can and we're all trying to raise our kids and talk to them about everything that needs to be discussed.”

“Glamour is really fun.”

“I just want to be educated.”

“What really motivates you to try to work things out as an actor is in large part fear, because you want to get into that narrative and bring the audience along.”

“By the time I was in high school, Roe v. Wade had passed, so that was also happening; girls were getting pregnant and getting abortions - and that happened in my school too.”

“It's hard to make a living in this business. Unions aren't as strong as they used to be. For a journeyman actor - someone who doesn't have a famous name but has consistent work in theater or film or TV - it has become harder to get through, harder to raise a family.”

“I feel that certain things are best kept inside a family and not discussed with anyone else.”

“I feel very, very lucky to have come from the family I did. We have our dysfunctions and our problems, just like any family. But my parents are extremely loving people.”

“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.”

“If anything, I want to please people too much.”

“I never speak for my husband, and I never speak for my children. It's a rule. Believe me, it is.”

“There's no question that you can explore aspects of yourself through roles that you play, and you get a chance to investigate yourself; that's healthy, and it's therapeutic in a way. But if you're indulging yourself, exploration at the cost of the story or the project, that's not good.”

“Oh, honey, I'm from Oklahoma! This is who I am - middle-class all the way!”

“A lot of directors in my experience are very receptive. They see what you do first, and then they want to find a place to put the camera, and they tweak you here and there.”

“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?”

“I think you sort of shed skins as you go along in life. You get into your 40s, and you feel like, 'OK, no more pretending.' You get to just be who you are.”

“I'm lucky: almost all my family has lived to be very old. I have one grandfather who lived to be 100.”

“Yes, I know I've played these women, but I'm not really conniving at all.”

“I'm still very critical of myself in film.”

“I don't really have a choice. I'm getting older.”