Melissa Leo Quotes

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Melissa Leo

Profession : Actress

Birth : September 14, 1960

I know what it meant to me to play the Reverend Mother, a role I've, in some ways, prepared a lifetime to do. It's why I took the part.

Melissa Leo

I'm not a particularly ambitious actress. I love to go and do my work, head down in the dirt, and be the character.

Melissa Leo

Docudrama is not really my game, but it's interesting to play real people; it's interesting to play 'real.'

Melissa Leo

Hire me for the next picture. I don't have to just play down-and-out trailer trash and mean, old, wicked, old nuns. I could play a princess or a queen. That's all I wanted to do. Because campaigning does go on. It's a part of selling the film.

Melissa Leo

Why do we have to pretend we're not in the sales game? I didn't sign on to be a salesman. I signed on to be an actor.

Melissa Leo

I always wanted to play a nun, and to play the Reverend Mother was a thrill of a lifetime for me. But, generations back, my family were not churchgoers, which is an unusual thing in the United States.

Melissa Leo

As an actor, you live a little bit of a cloistered life. It's a lonely life. You oddly, strangely find yourself all alone, quite often, with a lot of time to think.

Melissa Leo

I know that one of my difficulties as an actor is to try to do too much, from all those years ago when my acting took place live on a stage. It was just my shiny face there, so you've gotta be super careful how much over-expressing you're doing with your eyes and nose and so on.

Melissa Leo

You have to let the costume inform you.

Melissa Leo

I live in the country, and I live a fairly natural, holistic life. Sometimes I get put up in hotels where they use chemical sprays to clean things, or there are chemicals used that I stay away from.

Melissa Leo

Wayward Pines, I tell you, is a strange place, and the entry is always the hardest part. I was just going along for the ride.

Melissa Leo

'Wayward Pines' has largely been, in my experience, a show left to the actors.

Melissa Leo

I'm interested in what the fans think, in what would make them feel connected to the Wayward Pines they had grown to love. I had a lot of fun thinking about the first season.

Melissa Leo