Annette Bening Quotes

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Annette Bening

Profession : Actress

Birth : May 29, 1958

I wanted to be a classical actress. I plodded along. I went to junior college in San Francisco, I was in a Repertory Company. My hero was Eva Le Gallienne, who was a great theater actress at the turn of the century who created her own company, and she wrote these hilarious autobiographies at the time.

Annette Bening

I think in the past, around the time that method acting became so prevalent, it used to be that American actors were thought to be the kind that would work more from the inside out, and that the English actors worked more from the outside in.

Annette Bening

I read 'Game Change.' If you want to relive the campaign, that book is unbelievable. It's great. It's the book of that campaign. It brought all the memories back of everything with Clinton and Obama, and Sarah Palin and McCain, and choosing her, and John Edwards. It was an interesting book.

Annette Bening

I still remember the five points of salesmanship: attention, interest, conviction, desire and close.

Annette Bening

I never felt like I had made it.

Annette Bening

It's easier to see in someone else, another actor, how they kind of disappear and then this other persona appears. A great actor is a thing of mystery.

Annette Bening

I feel very, very lucky to have come from the family I did. We have our dysfunctions and our problems, just like any family. But my parents are extremely loving people.

Annette Bening

When I watch my kids, and I see the primal level at which the sibling relationships are formed, then I completely understand what these unresolved adult sibling problems are based on. You know, 'Mom liked you better' and, 'You got your own room and I didn't.'

Annette Bening

The time I spend with my kids informs every fiber of who I am.

Annette Bening

Even with a stable character, you want something surprising to happen, hopefully because that's what the camera loves the most. That's what is great about film.

Annette Bening

I've always been pretty levelheaded. In show business, you need to have a certain internal stability.

Annette Bening

If you're an actor, you have to find a way to make peace with all the media attention.

Annette Bening

I've played parts that were just likable people, and there's a certain pleasure in that. And that's that.

Annette Bening

Somebody said something really smart: It's like you end up being the defense attorney for your role. Your job is to defend their point of view. You're fighting for what they want. You learn that in acting school - it's Acting 1A: 'What do you want? What's in the way?'

Annette Bening

It's always 'busy' with four children; it's chaos.

Annette Bening

Five billion people have played Hamlet. 'To be or not to be.' And how do you do that and find your way into your own journey, your own way of telling it?

Annette Bening

I'm lucky: almost all my family has lived to be very old. I have one grandfather who lived to be 100.

Annette Bening

My mother is not somebody who's troubled by aging.

Annette Bening

When I look at women, older than I am, in their 50s, 60, 70s, 80s, and I see women that I admire, I think, 'Oh, I get it; that's how I'm going to be.' I'm not scared. I want to be that.

Annette Bening

My husband and I have very similar backgrounds even though we're years apart. So there are a lot of things that we basically share.

Annette Bening