Jacki Weaver

“Well, I've been acting for 50 years now, professionally. I've been acting a lot longer. My mother reckons I was acting when I got out of the womb. But because I've been working in the theater, I've probably only done about 25 movies but I've done more than 100 plays.”

“In Australia, I grew up watching 'The Mickey Mouse Club,' my son grew up watching 'Sesame Street,' my grandson's growing up watching 'Dora The Explorer.' So we are sort of saturated with American culture from the day we're born, and to those of those who do have an ear for it, it's second nature.”

“I've done a lot of plays before where I had to do a New York accent, but never a Philly one before. They do the rhotic 'r' - where you say the 'r' - where most New Yorkers don't.”

“I know that Philadelphians hate New York actors passing off New York accents as Philadelphian when they are quite different.”

“I love pretending to be other people. The more unlike me they are the better - I find other people endlessly fascinating and myself incredibly boring.”

“Everything the Coen brothers do is brilliant.”

“I love when I am not typecast. I've been acting for 50 years. I was such a baby face; I was playing children until I was in my 30s, which frustrated me enormously. Now that I am 65 and getting to play women in their 50s, I am getting paid back for having to play children for so long.”

“I'm in fact Australian but my mother's English so I've got no problem playing a domineering English woman.”

“It's a basic tenet you learn at drama school. If you're playing someone evil, you can't make an objective moral judgment. You've got to get inside the character and empathize as much as possible.”

“It's a very generous culture, American culture. I know you can't generalize 300 million people, but everyone I've met here has been so lovely to me.”

“A lot of directors want to storyboard you, whereas the best way to get a performance out of an actor is a collaborative process where you listen to the actor's input.”

“I do a lot of American plays. I've done a lot of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Neil Simon. I was in 'Sisters Rosensweig,' 'Six Degrees of Separation,' all of that stuff. So we're very familiar with America. I did 400 performances of 'Born Yesterday.' I did 700 performances of 'They're Playing Our Song.'”

“I was an adventurer, and I got married a few times. I kept trying to find a relationship as good as my parents'.”

“I've had my share of villains and played some fairly nasty characters. But I've been acting for so long. I started out as the girl next door. Now I'm the grandmother next door.”

“I do have friends in Australia who now refer to me as 'Hollywood Jack.'”

“I remember I was a little girl when Elizabeth Taylor stole Eddie Fisher from America's Sweetheart, Debbie Reynolds, and the reaction back then was enormous! And Angelina Jolie was in trouble, too, for taking a husband away from another America's Sweetheart. Don't take husbands from America's Sweethearts.”

“We're becoming so much better at destigmatizing all sorts of things, including mental illness in 'Silver Linings.'”

“I'm crazy about the Coen brothers, I'm crazy about Sean Penn. I love the usual suspects like Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep and people like that.”

“I live for my work, apart from my family who come first. And I live to tell stories and pretend to be other people, it's something I've been doing since I was 3 years old. Maybe it's because I'm intrinsically bored with myself, and I find other people more interesting.”

“You learn stuff from every character you play about the human condition that can be quite enlightening.”