Top 60 Laura Dern Quotes

When man decides he can control nature, he’s in deep trouble.

If we could all figure out a way to just be true to ourselves and have a good time doing what we’re doing, it would be a lot more fun.

Irvin Kershner, no matter what anyone says, has done some great work. ‘Eyes of Laura Mars’ is an incredible movie.

Growth doesn’t hurt. This is what I’ve learned. In the end, it doesn’t hurt. It hurts while it’s happening. But in the end, you know, for life, for parenting, and for the arts, it’s not a bad – not a bad thing to try for.

It’s really fun to act like a bimbo. But it’s fun to act like a bimbo only when people know that you really aren’t one.

I think it’s about not just the crisis you’re in, but how do you get to the other side? How do we heal? How do we survive this experience while remaining hopeful instead of filled with despair? That’s what interests me.

I care a lot about fragrance not only in my life, but sometimes it feels right while working on a character.

I got picked for very unique and independent filmmaking experiences with auteurs. And I’m so lucky.

When you’re playing someone who has a strong ego about themselves, you can’t play them when you have the opposite opinion of the one they have of themselves.

I’ve worked with David Lynch since I was 17, and working with him is home and family; being around Alexander Payne is home and family, Jonathan Demme. There are directors… Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson… They are directors where I create homes.

I like movies about longing and desperation, and dark and light things, stories about people struggling to raise children, and to have relationships and be intimate with each other.

I don’t think you have to be in these serious, heavy, independent little movies to be an actor. Some of the most interesting acting I’ve seen is on cable television.

It’s interesting to play a real-life person who has already been a character on ‘Saturday Night Live.’

God bless nannies.

It’s always been a desire of mine to work with my parents.

It’s a strange world, as David Lynch would say.

Having been raised by actors who love moral ambiguity and flawed protagonists, I feel like it’s sort of in the blood to want to take it on.

I have never been someone who applied ‘work begets work’ to my career, sometimes unfortunately.

Having egregious divorces – where you just hate each other – is really the easy way out.

My mother is extremely interested in everything esoteric.

Starting my career as a kid, I was doing what jobs I got.

Ben Stiller, who I love and who is a friend and is such an incredible actor – he’s hilarious, obviously, but I thought his performance in ‘Greenberg’ was extraordinary.

At the end of the day, you have to sit with the scripts and decide where your heart is.

It would be great to make a movie that had the style of a great ’30’s film.

There’s always a side of a woman that likes a man from the other side of the tracks.

Love means a lot to me, and I love loving, and I love boys.

When you’re first reading the script and thinking about playing the part, it’s slightly daunting. It’s easy to question, ‘Is an audience going to like me? And is that my job?’

What a cool job to be part of – whether it’s doing lighting or acting or serving food on set. You’re part of telling a story that hopefully has an essential component, and that’s super exciting to me.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

I’m lucky enough that directors sometimes seek me out for little projects that people don’t even know about, that just surface later on.

Me and Woody Harrelson, we’re twins. We’re the same person. I should only make movies with him.

Any journey of a creative person has, you know, really unusual challenges and years where you don’t work and years where you work.

If I had different parents who were in it for the money, I might have a different perspective. But they really are artists; they intelligently approach each character and prepare in every sense of the word. I grew up in a world that had great discipline.

Sadly, half of marriages end in divorce. Half of my girl friends and male friends have been through one, and their kids are doing great. There’s no shame around it – unless you want to project that on to yourself – but certainly there’s no longer cultural shame. Everyone is walking through it.

If you’re looking to be loved for a part, it’s great and enticing to be adorable in a romantic comedy. But then, as an actor, you get stuck.

I try to do things I love or care about for some reason.

I knew I wanted to become an actor when I was 7 years old. My dad was working with Alfred Hitchcock, my mom was working with Martin Scorsese – and it was the great summer of my childhood.

My dad taught me to never be pigeonholed; to really allow yourself to reinvent characters as they reinvent you; to be bold and to be willing to play seemingly unlikeable people.

Going to the Academy Awards is something I remember since I was six, when I went with my mom for the first time, 14 with my dad, you know, and there I am, at 22, 23, whatever I was, sitting next to my mom. You know, and then again, there with my dad. Like, there’s a beauty to it, and I care deeply about film history.

All I can start with is what moves me and feels like a great challenge as an actor and I think is saying something unusual or irreverent or human – honest in some way.

In American culture we are supposed to take a pill when we’re depressed or in grief as opposed to actually feeling.

Like anything else, acting can become boring – a chore, really – if there isn’t any challenge. And I like taking challenges. Just when people think they have me figured out, I like to surprise them.

I can’t say ‘I’m proud to say’ – because it’s not a choice for many Americans – but I can say I’m fortunate enough to not be raising my kids on McDonald’s.

Something that I’ve cared about deeply my whole career is getting to work with filmmakers and inventors of stories that are hysterical because they are just so painfully true.

I tend to always love material with flawed protagonists and morally ambiguous people.

I love being in my 40s.

I care a lot about big food and everyone’s right to healthy, nutritious food and what’s caused obesity in America and obesity in children in America.

I resent ever being stereotyped.

It’s my deepest interest as an actor: I love discovering how human beings work, how their flaws reveal themselves – how to learn and grow from that – and how characters teach me things as a woman and as a parent.

Stay true to your own voice, and don’t worry about needing to be liked or what anybody else thinks. Keep your eyes on your own paper.

It’s lovely to be considered pretty and lovely to do photo shoots, and I just love fashion. But I’m proud that I did the characters I wanted to do.

I always wondered what it would be like to have a normal childhood.

For me, the greatest good fortune I have being raised by actors is I came in knowing that a career is the ebb and flow.

There are people who consider it almost unpatriotic to be inquisitive and to be truthful about your opinions.

I was on the cover of a lot of magazines, and there were compliments about beauty and fashion and what I was wearing. Man, if you get locked into that, you can lose your freedom as an actress.

I was raised on movie sets, and I decided for myself at a very young age that it was what I wanted to do.

I always wanted to do a ‘Ms. Smith Goes to Washington.’

I like to play people who are deeply flawed, and I want to find the good nature in them. I even try to be kind to myself when I’ve made big mistakes.

Every role is a new form of surrender.

My dad was always interested in characters he didn’t understand – he was such a great bad guy in movies. And that is really the thing that calls me to the material often: something I struggle to understand in human behaviour.