Connie Nielsen

“The price of confessing is to be confronted with the truth of who you are - you have to bear your faults, your frailties.”

“As an artist you actually do have to make a choice to be an outsider. If you're an outsider you have the freedom to say what people on the inside don't dare to say.”

“It's the best thing, when you are in a creative space, discovering something and being enamored with it and excited by it.”

“I drink red wine every night and chamomile tea before bed.”

“True strength lies in openness and working in concert with people and events.”

“I'm a pretty emotional gal.”

“I don't think people who are already burdened with social, economic, psychological situations, dysfunctional families, need to be burdened with other people with the same problems.”

“I don't think I can remember a moment in my life where people didn't discuss politics. People discuss politics at the table.”

“I started on the stage with my mom in Denmark doing political revues in a small, small town.”

“For breakfast, I eat organic food with high fat content, such as whole milk yogurt, nuts, seeds, fresh fruit and a scrambled egg. I cook it in organic grape seed oil for its high omega content. I drink a cappuccino for its dose of milk and the coffee for its taste, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.”

“We have a certain warped sense of humor in Scandinavia, and that is what comes across in the choices in a lot of our movies.”

“The act of writing can be a form of release - a confession performs the same action: putting your inner life on the page or into the hands of a trusted person releases tensions and sheds light on what often seems hidden until spoken - or written.”

“If you asked somebody, 'what do you wish for in life?' they wouldn't say 'happiness.' I would have answered 'excitement, knowledge,' God knows - I mean, many, many different things, but certainly not 'happiness'. It seemed like a foreign concept to wish for something that specific and that singular.”

“Doing social media is a way of not giving in to this inclination to hiding. But instead, I'm teaching myself to feel comfortable about being open.”

“I love doing stunts. I'm dedicated to stunts, in fact. I really find that that brings me even closer to a physical truth about my character that I enjoy being a part of. I love doing that stuff.”

“I am a political animal.”

“I always look for stories that really try to tell the world that I see, a world that values and is full, in fact, of stories that are important.”

“TV is a different animal these days. You can bring together really smart writing and directing, in-depth character development and really meaty political and emotional stories.”

“I'm definitely more attracted to chaos than to order. The point is, I find the female roles out there very cliche. If we are limited to being only lovers or mothers, we are limiting ourselves.”

“The size difference on a Warner Bros. film versus the small productions I had been on in Europe was enormous. You go from 20 people on set to 150.”