Top 19 Elisabeth Moss Quotes

I was raised with a lot of classical music. I loved ballet. I was a bun head for 10 years.

Men and women are both humans, so, for me, that makes my characters and the work that I do human stories.

Ever since I was 15, when I did my first movie by myself, where my mom wasn’t there and I had a guardian, I got to know the crew, and I got to be part of a group and a family. I love that part of it, the friendships that you make.

Why a musician loves playing jazz or classical music or what makes them happy, and why an artist likes to paint – it’s so hard to actually put into words what that feeling is of joy that we get, but that is what I get: a feeling of joy when the camera is rolling, even if I’m doing something that is not joyous.

I don’t feel I was ever a ‘famous’ child actor. I was just a working actor who happened to be a kid. I was never really in a hit show until I was a teenager with West Wing playing First Daughter Zoey Bartlet. In a way, that was my saving grace – not being a star on a hit show. It kept me working and kept me grounded.

The great thing about Pete and Peggy’s storyline is that you barely have to do anything. There’s so much there, so much history, that you can have them exchange a look and it’s so loaded. So you honestly don’t have to do anything.

I’ve had to consciously try not to do all television and try to do films.

There’s nothing like getting yourself into character and seeing a different person. It really wears on your vanity.

Obviously, my life and my job in 2010 is very different from Peggy’s experience in the 1960s. I exist in a world that enjoys more equality between men and women. But I don’t take any of that into my performance. I just want to play the character as who she is as an individual – scene to scene.

I love working with male actors, and I think there’s a tendency to write really interesting characters that would work solely alongside men where they would be in a man’s world and have to deal with that, and it creates a lot of interesting storylines. For me, it’s kind of circumstantial, but I definitely enjoy it.

I think every day there is some new actress comes out and inspires me to do something else… like Hilary Swank. After she did Boys Don’t Cry, I felt this yearning to go out and be even half as good as she was.

It’s a great dynamic. The dynamic between men and women in the workplace is really interesting.

Women know that we’re not just strong. We’re not just vulnerable. We are not just attractive or not attractive. We are many things at once, and we’re able to see into that complexity.

I think that people should absolutely be allowed to do whatever they want with their bodies and to live the life they want to lead.

There’s this whole feeling that women should be small and quiet and polite, and I don’t think that’s really gotten us anywhere.

We grew up with musicians coming over jamming. We had tons of instruments. So holidays were always like, 50 people would come over, and there would be a jam session with everyone playing jazz.

I love my work, but I do not think that I am saving the world… I am a Valley Girl.

I’ve always considered myself a feminist. But, like a lot of women of my generation, I didn’t think we had to fight for it. I thought it was all done. I took so much for granted.

Why an artist loves what they do is often so hard to describe.