Top 90 Gaby Hoffmann Quotes

Every scene is on the table to collaborate on, to pick apart, to try a million different ways. Usually, what ends up occurring in the end is something that no single person knew would happen or had planned for.

I never set out to be an actor. Again, my mother presented this job by job to me at the time, and if it sounded fun, I would say yes and if it didn’t, I would say no. I always knew, since I was 7 or 8 years old, that it was a means to an end and that I wanted to go to college.

When I was a kid, I wasn’t making my choices based on anything other than ‘Did I want to work that day?’ or ‘Did being in school sound more fun?’ And I don’t remember ever reading a script and thinking, ‘Is this going to be a fun part to play?’

I actually voted for Nader.

Nicole Richie invited me to her birthday party, and it was at Michael Jackson’s Neverland!

I just had fun making the movies – just being on set – but I didn’t really care about the acting part.

I think being on a set where people aren’t being treated as equals, and with just a common level of decency and respect, is really uncomfortable.

Her mother, Laurie Simmons, is a contemporary artist, and my stepmother, Cindy Sherman, is a photographer, so they’ve known each other forever. Lena and I were often at the same dinner parties when we were kids.

I’m basically useless in interviews because I don’t remember anything. But I find it very peaceful, actually, because I have a sort of busy mind. I’m like, ‘This is great!’

It’s hard to live in a blind and aimless – or dishonest, rather – narrative when somebody in your family is going farther toward – or at least think they are and say they are – their true self.

Suburbia, to me, was the most fantastical, unusual place. I thought it was Disneyland.

I watched a lot of television as a kid, and the suburbs to me – that was exotic! Like, a mom and dad who lived in the same house and had jobs and cooked breakfast at the same time every morning and did laundry in a washing machine and dryer? That was like, ‘Woah! Who are they? How do you get to be like that?’

I was raised in a way where there was no distinction between kids and adults.

I think I happened to work with sort of a bunch of slightly difficult male directors when I was a kid. I’ve since worked with lots of male directors that I love, so I no longer see the distinction gender-wise.

We lived in a classless society. We’d spend a summer at Gore Vidal’s house in Italy, but we were on and off welfare.

I just wrapped a new show for Amazon called ‘Transparent.’

We all got driven out of Manhattan. It was a very conducive place for artists when I was growing up, and now it’s definitely not. The city has been completely taken over by the rich.

The sleeplessness is proven; it eradicates your memory.

I really enjoy taking care of people, and I was really ready to have a kid, so I didn’t have to sacrifice anything that I didn’t want to give up.

There’s something extremely bizarre about the way people consume media now.

People are obsessed with actresses being hairless, fatless Barbie dolls.

I think that the fact that we had a trans woman on the cover of ‘Vanity Fair’… is only good for the trans community. I can’t imagine that the more we talk about this that it’s not just doing everybody a lot of good.

I think that every young person is a little mentally ill, you know? If we’re not totally shutting down, we’re all a little bit mentally ill in our twenties and maybe into our early thirties.

I’ve always looked the same, and every 10 years, I’m a little bit in fashion.

I’m not on social media; I don’t watch TV. I’m really out of it.

There are really very few roles for women in films in which you can also make a living.

I don’t revisit anything unless there’s a really good occasion, like BAM screened ‘This Is My Life’, with Lena Dunham and Nora Ephron before she died. It also screened ‘Uncle Buck’, so I took my niece. I don’t have a TV, so I don’t happen upon old movies like you would if you had cable.

I don’t know if I’d say I feel green, but I’m getting to know myself as an actor now in a way that I never did as a kid.

I just want my kids to have the space of childhood to explore themselves as fully as possible.

I really, really loved making ‘This Is My Life’ and ‘Now and Then.’

I think that anybody coming out and saying, ‘This is who I am, and let me show it to you…’ is good for the world.

I loved being on the set of ‘Field of Dreams’ because I hung out with the baseball players all day, played cards, flirted with Ray Liotta, and had a ball.

Everybody I grew up with has incredible self-confidence and self-assurance. We were all loud, outspoken, wild kids and were celebrated for it.

I wanted to live in the suburbs and have a white picket fence and my own bedroom. And a staircase – I thought having a staircase meant that you were a normal family. I thought somehow if you could transplant us to the suburbs, we would become a normal family. But in retrospect, I’m so grateful I grew up in the Chelsea.

Oh, I’m pregnant on ‘Girls.’

I certainly don’t have any boundaries myself, but I think I’m very aware of other people’s.

I’ve never been on a television show as a regular before.

It’s so nice that there’s all this new space for new, good content. It’s good news for us actors, since nobody makes real independent films anymore.

Here in America, just as we see such incredible progress happening in one state, we see another state passing absolutely disgusting and oppressive laws against the rights of all sorts of people – transgender people, gay people, women.

I’m normally the least busy person I know.

It’s funny because I grew up with the T.V. on 24 hours a day. And the more money I made, the more T.V.s we had.

My mom was a single mother, raising my sister and me. My mom has an incredible talent for living in the world without traditional structure, and her friend, who was in advertising, put me in a commercial when I was five. It was just to make money.

I think anyone who behaves boorishly but without a good sense of humor is not as fun to watch.

I was never that famous, but I do think going to college and really getting away from the business and taking a true break is incredibly, incredibly important if you start acting at a young age.

I just wanted to rollerblade at Union Square.

It was like I lived in a little suburban neighborhood in the middle of New York City because I could run around barefoot or, you know, completely independently from a very young age in the safety of this building where I knew everybody and where I had friends on every floor, and I knew the bellmen in the lobby.

Going into my 20s, I was uncertain, trying to figure out what my relationship to acting is.

History is weirdly dismissed as not having anything to do with the present moment.

I met Jill Soloway at Sundance a couple years ago. I was there for ‘Crystal Fairy’, and she was there for ‘Afternoon Delight’. She reached out and wanted to get together.

When people are struggling, that’s a painful place to be in, to not know who you are and where you belong and what you desire.

Television has filled the space for actors that really want to make good work and not just make a lot of money and be famous for making a lot of money and being famous.

I don’t think it should be allowed for people to start working at a young age and not take the time to just be living as themselves in the real world, especially now in this new age of new media and the obsession with celebrity. I think it’s a real crime.

I grew up with artists and drag queens. These were just my neighbors and friends and the people who are raising me.

All my cousins steal things. They’re just a bunch of thieves. My whole family is like that. You put something down for a second, and they steal it. You never see it again.

I don’t watch a lot of T.V. I only watch things via Netflix, so I only watch the things that I’m choosing to watch.

It’s true that most people in the trans community don’t have the incredible wealth and privilege that Caitlyn does. I don’t think that, in any way, diminishes her struggle in her own transitioning.

I started missing acting when I was in school, and I realized after being in the business after however many years that I was really interested in film.

I had a world of people who were raising me; it was like a little village.

I made a lot of movies that people loved when I was a kid, but I didn’t have any real relationship to them.

I think it’s great anytime somebody can be in control of their own distribution.

People would say, ‘Can I hug you?’ And I would say, ‘Yes, you can hug me! We’re fellow New Yorkers!’

You can do your job and be yourself and be comfortable all at the same time!

I’ve been very excited to have children for a long time. It definitely added an interesting twist to the night we screened ‘Lyle’ at Outfest, and I got up to do the Q&A, and I had this huge belly no one was expecting. It creeped everybody out in the best way.

I’m interested in people. I’m curious about people, and of course we’re curious about people whose work we respond to. So I’m not saying that I don’t understand fascination with other people. But as it’s dealt with in this American, modern-day culture, I find it not just boring but actually sort of destructive, really.