A biography for Frances McDormandhasn’t been written yet.
“I want to be revered. I want to be an elder; I want to be an elderess.”
“Because of my own insecurities about the way I look, I do sometimes sabotage the looks of my characters by making them as homely as possible. I've never done a glamour part. I'd like to some day, though I don't know if I could pull it off.”
“I have friends who are movie stars, and I think it's just as hard a job as being a working actor. But it's a different job, and it's not the one I want.”
“I've always known that I'll have a career for the rest of my life because they'll always make movies about men, and men need women in their lives. But, when it comes to telling a woman's story, they're complex, circular, and not genre-driven.”
“A 90-minute time frame is not long enough to tell a good female story, and that's why long-format television has become so great for female storytelling and for female performers and directors and writers.”
“There's only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power.”
“We wrote 'Olive Kitteridge' as six hours, and they asked us to make it in four.”
“There is simply too much of my life that is involved in my work that I couldn't replicate in any other way.”
“I'm not really interested in promoting 'Olive' as a series about depression or mental illness.”
“Unless I'm on a stage, I don't want to be the event in someone's day.”
“I'm not an actor because I want my picture taken. I'm an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange.”
“Getting older and adjusting to all the things that biologically happen to you is not easy to do and is a constant struggle and adjustment.”
“I will go to my grave being known as Marge Gunderson. It'll be on my gravestone if I have one. I don't mind that, because it was a great character.”
“I would disagree that America is any more racist or ridiculous than anywhere else.”
“You just have to play the character.”
“I learned how to read in second grade, and I entered a summer contest at my local library in Chattanooga, Tennessee. If you read more books than anybody else, you got your Polaroid up on the bulletin board, and I did.”
“If, when I leave this earth, I'm remembered for 'Fargo,' so be it. But I think old Marge Gunderson is gonna get a run for her money with Olive Kittredge.”
“I haven't wanted to play a mother for a long time because I am one.”
“That's another great thing about getting older. Your life is written on your face.”
“My feminist training was that this was your goal, to be a self-sufficient woman, but that is a miscalculation. It's just not the way we work. We work in dialogue with the community.”