Top 100 Annette Bening Quotes
#1. I ... understand that age is kind of awesome. I am fortunate enough to know women like Gloria Steinem - who I think is one of the most stunning women on the planet - [who] doesn't touch her face. Diane Keaton, Annette Bening - all of these fabulous, fearless women who are flawless - they embrace it!
Jennifer Aniston
#2. In America, celebrities who go to see your show will come backstage and introduce themselves. Meeting Annette Bening and Ethan Hawke that way was amazing, but when Tom Hanks came, it was really special - I've loved him since I first saw him in 'Big!'
Tom Riley
#3. The careers that I admire and actually try to emulate are those of Julianne Moore and Annette Bening. Those women, to me, make amazing choices. They're sexy, beautiful women, but that doesn't dictate their choices.
Eva Mendes
#4. Demi Moore is an extremely sexy woman. Melanie Griffith, Annette Bening - these are all brave women. They've all managed to have kids and still be sexy. If anything, being a mom makes them even sexier.
Lesli Linka Glatter
#5. For example, the character of Claire in In Dreams wasn't imagined enough by me. Annette Bening is a great actress, and she gave a great performance, but because I hadn't fully written it essentially the character wasn't finished.
Neil Jordan
#6. Not only does Annette Bening have a really lovely, deep voice, but she's also a great articulator. I think I'm more of a mumbler.
Lisa Cholodenko
#7. Most women would say they relate to 'Hedda Gabler' - there's a part of her in them. Ibsen was writing about a deep ambivalence that many women feel about domesticity. I think about myself and friends of mine - we have some of Hedda's qualities and traits.
Annette Bening
#8. What makes us love a character is a character that tries.
Annette Bening
#9. My parents were very supportive. They went to every show. And they never told me not to do what I was doing.
Annette Bening
#10. I love the craft of acting, I love learning, I love everything that comes with the new project; the whole process is totally intoxicating to me.
Annette Bening
#12. Getting all dressed up and putting on fancy clothes - all of that's a great thing, but oddly, it doesn't really have a lot to do with acting most of the time.
Annette Bening
#13. We all get lost along the way, but hopefully we figure out some sort of path. It helps if you can imagine the process as well as the goal. Those kinds of dreams are easier to achieve.
Annette Bening
#14. 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.
Annette Bening
#15. I don't see myself as having to compete with younger actresses; I don't feel that.
Annette Bening
#17. I think for all of us, as we age, there are always a few moments when you are shocked.
Annette Bening
#18. When I started in the theater, I'd do plays by Shakespeare or Ibsen or Chekhov, and they all created great women's roles.
Annette Bening
#19. I read 'Game Change.' If you want to relive the campaign, that book is unbelievable. It's great. It's the book of that campaign. It brought all the memories back of everything with Clinton and Obama, and Sarah Palin and McCain, and choosing her, and John Edwards. It was an interesting book.
Annette Bening
#20. Find the story you want to tell. If you don't want to write it, find somebody to write it.
Annette Bening
#22. I never thought my private life would be newsworthy.
Annette Bening
#23. I fall in love with all the people I'm working with, women, directors, everybody. As actors, that's actually one of the real pleasures of the work. You have this weird opportunity to get unnaturally close to people very quickly.
Annette Bening
#24. My mother is not somebody who's troubled by aging.
Annette Bening
#25. 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.
Annette Bening
#27. I'm interested in writing that explores all sides of human beings.
Annette Bening
#28. I like that I've been through things, that when something happens, it resonates with something that already happened. It's not that things like loss are more or less painful. But they're deeper. I find that fascinating.
Annette Bening
#29. I never speak for my husband, and I never speak for my children. It's a rule. Believe me, it is.
Annette Bening
#30. I love being busy, and I love having a lot going on; it's exciting.
Annette Bening
#31. I find the reality of our emotional lives interesting.
Annette Bening
#32. My sister and I fought a lot when we were kids. I was the little bratty sister, and she would kind of walk away, not wanting to be associated with me.
Annette Bening
#33. Anybody who has children and children who are well feels a sense of responsibility towards parents and kids and families that are struggling and that aren't well.
Annette Bening
#34. I didn't picture myself as a movie actress. I began to think about it around college. I remember thinking, 'Well somebody has to be in them,' so maybe I could do that eventually. It's all been a surprise.
Annette Bening
#35. Yes, I know I've played these women, but I'm not really conniving at all.
Annette Bening
#36. When I look at women, older than I am, in their 50s, 60, 70s, 80s, and I see women that I admire, I think, 'Oh, I get it; that's how I'm going to be.' I'm not scared. I want to be that.
Annette Bening
#37. I still remember the five points of salesmanship: attention, interest, conviction, desire and close.
Annette Bening
#38. 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.
Annette Bening
#39. I do have to take care of myself, not only because I'm in the movies, just for mental health reasons. I exercise for me. You know, maybe it would be nice to not have to do that in order to feel good, but I do. I feel like I have to, to feel good. To clear my head and all of that, so.
Annette Bening
#40. Even with a stable character, you want something surprising to happen, hopefully because that's what the camera loves the most. That's what is great about film.
Annette Bening
#42. Critics have a responsibility to put things in a cultural and sociological or political context. That is important.
Annette Bening
#43. 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.
Annette Bening
#44. 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.
Annette Bening
#45. Right now, I love the fact that I have so many opportunities, but I know this privileged position cannot last. That doesn't mean that I'll stop working. I picture myself as an old actress doing cameos in films with people saying: 'Isn't that that Bening woman?'
Annette Bening
#46. I've always been pretty levelheaded. In show business, you need to have a certain internal stability.
Annette Bening
#47. I have perfected the art of putting my feet on my husband's lap during awards ceremonies so he can rub them.
Annette Bening
#48. I knew I wanted children in my life. The acting was always in relation to it. Life at home is chaos. They're wonderful. They're such interesting human beings. I just love it. I'm lucky.
Annette Bening
#49. If you can open people's hearts first, then maybe people's minds get opened after that.
Annette Bening
#50. My dad was in the life insurance business, so I learned about selling when I was about 14 because I started working as a secretary.
Annette Bening
#52. I've made some movies that I really loved that nobody saw.
Annette Bening
#53. There's love for your parents, your family, your spouse, your partner, your friends, but the nature of the connection you have with your child, there's nothing like it. It has its own character and it's so serious and so powerful, and so it's a prism through which I see everything.
Annette Bening
#54. 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.
Annette Bening
#55. I think we as celebrities have a lot more control.
Annette Bening
#56. I'm certainly not a perfect mother, but I am an avid mother, let me put it that way.
Annette Bening
#57. 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?
Annette Bening
#58. With movies, so much of it is, 'Who is the human being that is going to be directing it?' Because it is their medium. In a way, you are serving the director, and when it is someone that you feel you can have a lot of confidence in, it can make a big difference.
Annette Bening
#59. I feel really lucky that I'm able to pursue the work that I love. I want my children to see that. I want them to have that for themselves, something that they love, that they do, that they pursue in their lives as a way of growing and learning.
Annette Bening
#60. Having a life outside of movies is like pure oxygen. It makes the work more precious and informed.
Annette Bening
#61. I always wonder about people's history and their lives, especially people that are a little bit more distant, who obviously have had some kind of a thing, and you know there's some reason why they're not able to connect. It's not because they don't want to. They don't have the ability.
Annette Bening
#62. My character in 'Running With Scissors' is manic-depressive. She starts out as a wonderfully eccentric person, and then descends into a terrible illness.
Annette Bening
#63. Most people are looking for something to give their life meaning.
Annette Bening
#64. I had never been attracted to younger guys. I had, from my late teens, always liked men who were older than me.
Annette Bening
#65. To me, I didn't think of acting as being a young thing only.
Annette Bening
#67. I think when you're at your best as an actor, it is cathartic.
Annette Bening
#68. I saw a Shakespeare play when I was - I guess I was in junior high. And I just fell in love with the theater because, for me, it was a combination of big ideas and feeling.
Annette Bening
#69. And if there's anything movies can do in a way that I just love, and I love as an audience is, 'Show me something I don't know about. Show me something I haven't seen.'
Annette Bening
#70. I think in the past, around the time that method acting became so prevalent, it used to be that American actors were thought to be the kind that would work more from the inside out, and that the English actors worked more from the outside in.
Annette Bening
#72. I've played parts that were just likable people, and there's a certain pleasure in that. And that's that.
Annette Bening
#73. 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.
Annette Bening
#75. Everybody has a public life, and they have their own private life. Everybody has their secrets. Everybody has their own private, you know, agonies as well as joys. And that's what great drama, whether it's the movies or the theater, that's what it shows.
Annette Bening
#76. My husband and I have very similar backgrounds even though we're years apart. So there are a lot of things that we basically share.
Annette Bening
#77. I feel that certain things are best kept inside a family and not discussed with anyone else.
Annette Bening
#78. It's easier to see in someone else, another actor, how they kind of disappear and then this other persona appears. A great actor is a thing of mystery.
Annette Bening
#79. If you're an actor, you have to find a way to make peace with all the media attention.
Annette Bening
#80. 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.
Annette Bening
#81. When I watch my kids, and I see the primal level at which the sibling relationships are formed, then I completely understand what these unresolved adult sibling problems are based on. You know, 'Mom liked you better' and, 'You got your own room and I didn't.'
Annette Bening
#83. We want to be seen for who we really are, and each person has his own complex story and reasons for doing what they do.
Annette Bening
#84. I'm lucky: almost all my family has lived to be very old. I have one grandfather who lived to be 100.
Annette Bening
#85. I think people have a right to their point of view.
Annette Bening
#86. To me idealized characters are so boring to play, especially having grown up in the classical theater. That's a great experience, but as a woman, especially, you've played a lot of idealized characters. So when you've got someone who has weaknesses as well as strengths, that's interesting.
Annette Bening
#87. It's kind of a mystery to me, as far as my own life experiences and what I've witnessed - why some people can just move on through traumatic experiences, in childhood particularly, and why other people are just paralyzed by it. I just don't know how and why that is.
Annette Bening
#88. The tension I feel is the moment they say, 'Action!' Movies are like lightning in a bottle, and you always want to find when you possibly can catch a surprising moment.
Annette Bening
#89. Oh, honey, I'm from Oklahoma! This is who I am - middle-class all the way!
Annette Bening
#92. Somebody said something really smart: It's like you end up being the defense attorney for your role. Your job is to defend their point of view. You're fighting for what they want. You learn that in acting school - it's Acting 1A: 'What do you want? What's in the way?'
Annette Bening
#93. It used to be the one or the other, right? You were the 'bad girl' or the 'good girl' or the 'bad mother' or 'the good mother,' 'the horrible businesswoman who eschewed her children' or 'the earth mother who was happy to be at home baking pies,' all of that stuff that we sort of knew was a lie.
Annette Bening
#94. Anyone who is drawn in broad strokes either negatively or positively is generally not very interesting to play.
Annette Bening
#95. I think what's interesting about the whole paparazzi thing is that unless you're Brad Pitt or Madonna, you can pretty much avoid it. You know when you're going to an opening that you will be photographed, so that's fine. And you know the restaurants that have paparazzi, so you don't go to them.
Annette Bening
#96. I am really looking forward as I get older and older, to being less and less nice.
Annette Bening
#97. 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.
Annette Bening
#98. Acting is not about being famous, it's about exploring the human soul.
Annette Bening
#99. It's always 'busy' with four children; it's chaos.
Annette Bening
#100. In a film, if you can capture what's going on underneath, you can begin to make a connection between the character and the people watching it.
Annette Bening
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