Melissa Leo Quotes

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Melissa Leo

Profession : Actress

Birth : September 14, 1960

I mean, the unfair treatment of women and black people and Indians and other groups, that's real. Mistreatment of other people because 'I'm better than you are' is such a sad part of the world.

Melissa Leo

I can nap with hustle and bustle around me; I can nap quietly all by myself. It's something I've always been good at.

Melissa Leo

To be a comic, you must reveal yourself in your most grotesque nudity. And it's only then, when the truth gets told, when the audience recognizes it somewhere in themselves, that they get that great medicine of laughter.

Melissa Leo

I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke.

Melissa Leo

More often, I'm asked to play somebody's mother, somebody's partner, somebody's wife.

Melissa Leo

There were not enough women like Kay on TV and now there are none.

Melissa Leo

An actor has to be very, very careful, as one of the most wonderful props - and actors love props - is a cigarette. There's so much to do with it: you can bring it up to your face, play with the smoke. It's just the greatest - ever since I was 16 and in acting school in England, I've been playing around with cigarettes.

Melissa Leo

I have some close friends I keep in touch with. I knit. I watch a little too much TV. I ski, if the weather's right for that. If I can find a group of buddies, I go rock climbing.

Melissa Leo

That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it.

Melissa Leo

The climate informs the character.

Melissa Leo

The power of television - it's so present in our lives, we don't even know how powerful it is.

Melissa Leo

To play someone when the character masks their own emotions, doesn't understand their own emotions, has no release for their own emotions, and yet is full of emotion - that is a much harder character to play than someone who has somewhere to put it.

Melissa Leo

I'm a very lucky girl who gets to act for a living! So why sit around griping and grousing about what's not there.

Melissa Leo

Well, I don't think of myself as a feminist at all. As soon as we start labeling and categorizing ourselves and others, that's going to shut down the world.

Melissa Leo

You know, when I got started on television in the '80s, you would go to the costume department, and if you were a female they put you into a skirt. And you had a pocketbook, usually a shoulder bag.

Melissa Leo

People often expect me to be something other than what I am.

Melissa Leo

An actor's life is fairly lonely.

Melissa Leo

I'm not particularly fond of the hybrid writer-director or actor-director.

Melissa Leo

I'm very old-school. I like a director to direct me. I like to be the actor.

Melissa Leo

The key to acting has much more to do with listening than with talking.

Melissa Leo