Top 60 Sissy Spacek Quotes

I wouldn’t sell those New York actors short.

Our life is our life. If we waste it, we’re fools.

My cousin, Rip Torn, persuaded me not to change my name. You shouldn’t change what you are in the search for success.

Rarely in film acting do you get to do a scene for very long.

If you live only a movie-star life, you know only movie-star things. I needed to live a regular life with normal people around.

Fame sweeps you away. I had to go home every six months to remember who I am.

I am a woman of simple tastes.

I’ve not had a mean life.

I don’t like to do something just to prove I can do it.

I think my mother’s family came on the Mayflower from England – D.A.R., you know.

I think that no human gets away unscathed in this old life. We’ve all experienced loss and grief and pain and tragedy.

If I hadn’t left Texas, I might not have met the director Terrence Malick, and I wouldn’t have met my husband and I wouldn’t have had the children that I’ve had. Life is interesting like that.

I think that we all fantasize about that teeny tiny time in the film industry when women ruled, back in the ’40s.

I just make films that attract me.

That’s what I love about acting and love and drama and art: that humanness we all share.

That was the magical thing about the Seventies: artists ruled. Because films were relatively low-budget, nobody cared. We could just go off and work.

There have been several television movies, ‘Carrie 2,’ two musicals! I remember thinking, the first time there was a musical on Broadway, ‘Oh my gosh! The people who ordinarily go to the theaters, that’s not really the audience.’

You want to live your life and live it just as fully and as deeply as you can. That’s your deep well of reserve. That’s where you get all your – the fodder for your work.

In every movie, there’s always some physical thing that triggers the character for me. In ‘The Long Walk Home,’ it was the girdle. Every time I’d put that girdle on, I’d feel my character wiggle to life.

For me, I never really wanted to be in a ‘Sissy Spacek’ vehicle. That was not my intention. I got to be the ‘Everygirl.’

I follow the roles.

Oftentimes you read scripts, and you get to one and you think, ‘OK, is this good, or is this just better than all the other ones that I have been reading?’

I like horseback riding. I like to hike. I play guitar and sing.

I actually never got in a play in school. My teacher said I never learned my lines.

I’ve always been a people-watcher, and as an actor, later, I just mined all those little details.

Most things in my life I had before leaving home. Values, support, great family. I was shaped at an early age. A musician playing guitar, I wanted to be a folk singer.

The human condition is the human condition, and what we try to do is illuminate the human condition.

You know, I don’t know what the future will bring, but I’m ready for whatever comes!

There’s kind of a time you get warned about where the rug gets pulled out from under you: beyond ingenue, before you get into character stuff.

Film is an amazing art form, but so is life. When your career and your life can work together, and one can support the other, it’s just great.

I’ve done some of my best work in films that fell right through the cracks, so I try to not make career moves but to build a body of work.

I don’t have any regrets, because I think life is like a creek. It kind of meanders along, and you instinctively do the things you are meant to do. There’s no great plan except doing really good scripts, meeting great filmmakers. And I have to have something that I can bring to the role.

My roots allow me to let go of the fear of failure.

Jingle taps on the majorette boots were an important part of a little girl growing up in the South.

I’m a fool for a brilliant filmmaker. And for someone who wants to try new things.

I love the women I’ve played.

I’m drawn to ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, which is a big part of the human condition.

I’m not Meryl Streep. My God – she’s the greatest actor that ever lived. It’s sad that ordinary actors like me are compared to her.

It’s not seeing myself 40 feet tall on a movie screen – it’s the work. That’s what thrills me.

New York gets under your skin, and I think once you’ve fallen in love with New York, you take that with you. I love New York.

One day, it just dawned on me that I’m from Texas, and that’s what I am.

For me, life is a bowl of cherries.

I had no fear ’cause it seemed everyone in the audience always applauded whatever I did. Course, maybe it was because I always seemed to know everyone in the audience.

There are classic horror films that, if you are a human being in this world, you have to have seen. They’ve become a part of our culture.

I hated country music growing up, but it gets in your bone marrow, kind of like a disease.

I go where the good work is being done.

Ultimately, you have to work for your own enlightenment – for smarts – or it gets boring.

It’s difficult to just let go of a character. Especially after you’ve been preparing and researching for weeks.

I like to do films that I would want to go see, basically. I’m not out to make a fast buck.

The business has been good to me.

There’s a real danger in trying to stay king of the mountain. You stop taking risks, you stop being as creative, because you’re trying to maintain a position. Apart from anything else that really takes the fun out of it.

When I lived in New York City, I loved it so much. But every six months, I had to go home to Texas to remember who I was. Get filled back up.

We like to believe we are in control of our destinies, even though we never are and we never have been.

I write about Texas, New York, California and Virginia, and they’re all important places in my repertoire.

Hollywood is like a piranha. They don’t give you breathing room. You don’t have time to let your career breathe.

I swore to my parents that no one would ever be able to buy me.

Celebrity status for me came slowly. I wasn’t an overnight sensation. I had time to prepare emotionally.

I wanted to be Joni Mitchell.

When I first met David Lynch, he was living in the stables of the American Film Institute… He’d work all night and have his crew lock him in during the day, and he’d sleep.

I’m not paralyzed with fear, but I realize it is important to live as if there’s no tomorrow, always trying to maintain your integrity and have no regrets.