Top 30 Joan Allen Quotes

When I was 20 years old and first with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, we had an 88-seat theater in a basement and no money.

I just try and do the best with every role I get to do. Hopefully the experience in itself is a good experience and people will want to work with me.

I’m pretty picky about plays.

I was always much more shy. All I knew was that I loved to act. But I don’t know about the other part of it. I’m not sure I had the chutzpah to go and prove yourself.

How do we escape who we are? I think, going to college, I felt freer. I loved the clean slate. I wasn’t known as the sort of nerdy, studious girl. I met gay people for the first time in my life. I needed that expansion from a very conservative little town.

I get recognised sometimes. But I just live my life. I get on the bus, I get on the subway, it’s not a problem.

There are not many things that can happen much worse to a family than having a member taken and not knowing what happened to them.

My favorite way of learning for acting has been doing it, not talking about it.

I think plays deserve other interpretations. They should live on, and other people should should take their hand at them. I’m very supportive of that.

I’m hard to pin down. I tend to look different in films.

I didn’t really think about being a movie star. I was more about theater.

I love to walk three to four miles a day if I can.

I was the good girl. The straight A student, on the honour roll, part of the choir… I played the cello badly. I did plays.

I never liked the bar scene. I tried to like it. I would give it a try every three or four months. I’d think, tonight I’m going out. But I never met anybody in that circumstance.

My father passed away at, like, 87.

It’s such a great feeling to make people laugh. I know I’ve made people cry or want to slit their wrists, but to make people laugh is a very intoxicating, wonderful thing.

I thought that I wanted to be a cheerleader because I was one in middle school.

I certainly do get at the end of my rope at times. We all do.

Once I got to high school and auditioned for a play and got in, I thought this was really what I was looking for. Once that had got cleared up, from 13 on, that was it.

I don’t have a political bone in my body.

Everything starts with what’s on the page, what a writer has come up with. And whether it is a big studio film or independent film, is the story being well told? Is it interesting? Is the character interesting? And is there something about the character that may stretch me?

I have three wonderful siblings, and we all pitched in equally to help our mother.

My collaboration with Sally Potter on a small movie, ‘Yes,’ was very special to me. It helped my growth as an actor.

When I read something, first I have an instinctual, emotional response to it. But of course, acting isn’t only just feeling an instinct for what’s going on in the moment with the character. You have to be able to carve it out and consider, follow, and create the whole journey that the character you play is going through.

Almost any film that you do is an opportunity to open you up and make you more aware of an area that you might not be thinking about. That’s what is kind of cool, or one of the cool things about this profession.

I think that I do separate myself a fair amount. And I don’t feel like I am representing women. That’s up to however people interpret it once they sort of see it.

I think I knew acting was what I wanted to do. But I was from this small town and there was no place for an adult to recognise it.

I was a very good girl for a long time, that’s what really drew me to acting. The stage was the perfect place to be outrageous, to be sad, to be angry, to be all these different things.

It’s important to really listen to the other person and have them feel like they’re heard, to make sure the relationship feels equal.

I think of myself more as a character actor than that ingenue leading lady, who started out something like Michelle Pfeiffer, or Jessica Lange. I’m a bit quirkier than that.