Laura Dern Quotes

Luckily, I was raised by people whod already seen all the yuck stuff, which is why they originally didnt want me to act. I understood the difference between getting a part at a Hollywood party and getting a job.

Unfortunately, overall, movies are a conglomerate. People buy and sell people in this business, which can get really ugly.

I love to rescue animals.... The pounds were so crowded they were putting animals down almost immediately. Seven thousand dogs were put to sleep.

I wanted to go to Jupiter. That was my plan from day one, and David Lynch gave me the ticket.

The really courageous and bold thing is to make movies about human behaviour

If my career were a hairstyle, it would be helmet-head.

Whatever character you play, it gives you the chance to expose another side of yourself that maybe you've never felt comfortable with, or never knew about

I would say Steven Spielberg is family to me. He's a genius. We survived a hurricane together. I ran from half-puppet,half-nothing creatures. It was months of our life as family. It was the wildest film, Jurassic Park, I'd ever worked on that way.

We like our archetypes and heroes to be what they are at face value. And life doesn't work out like that

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

You don't have to run away from life your whole life. You can really live. You can change. And you can be an agent of change.

I'm lucky enough that directors sometimes seek me out for little projects that people don't even know about, that just surface later on.

There is so much in the world to care about.

I'm interested in human nature. That's why I chose to become an actor. Whatever people are struggling with, the struggle is often where the drama is.

It's a strange world, as David Lynch would say

I like movies about longing and desperation, and dark and light things, stories about people struggling to raise children, and to have relationships and be intimate with each other.

I don't turn my nose up at anything. If it's a great part, it's a great part. I'd love to do a box-office hit.

My mother opened a bank account for me when I made $60 on my first day of work as an extra. She's that kind of mother.

I just love, I love, I love movies.

There's something so accessible about heroes who have faults.

I made a commitment to myself: that I wanted to be an actress, and I wanted to do films that make a difference... It has to move people.

I really don't consider myself to be a conventional Hollywood star. I've never really been marketed by the big studios to do mass market box office films.

I hope we can be consummate artists as women or revolutionaries, or whatever women want to be, and also have love, not only for ourselves but from a partner.

That's life - to turn each other on, to feel good, to feel in love.

I'm interested in flawed protagonists. I was raised on them.

There's always a side of a woman that likes a man from the other side of the tracks

When man decides he can control nature, he's in deep trouble

People are more willing to talk about child abuse. When this whole McMartin thing went down, I was at a dinner party with about eight people, all from different backgrounds and from all over the world. And every single person at that table had had some weird experience as a child. I think everyone has - whether it was with a babysitter, or playing doctor, but usually when some older person tries to come in contact with you. It's amazing how much we block out.

You can change. And you can be an agent of change.

I made a commitment to myself: that I wanted to be an actress, and I wanted to do films that make a difference. Whether it makes someone laugh, or it has a moral to the story - it doesn't have to be an ethical film, but it has to move people. If it doesn't excite me, it's not worth doing - it's better to work on myself and my own life and wait until another great thing comes along.

When I started dating I had relationships with people who came from families that weren't at all artistic or whatever, and they didn't understand how to communicate. I find that so boring.

You can hardly tell where the computer models finish and the real dinosaurs begin

It's really fun to act like a bimbo. But it's fun to act like a bimbo only when people know that you really aren't one.

I still have a lot to learn. I just have two cats, and when I'm in a bad mood - you know, it would be very easy to throw a cat across a room.

Obviously, the urge to molest children comes from some experience the person has had as a child, and he or she never worked it out. Watching Raymond Buckey describe how he loved working with the kids, I could sense this 11-year-old who'd stopped and never grown further on a sexual level.

I do think my mother was a bit overprotective, not in any sordid way, but just normally. She certainly might say to me, "You know, Laura, I don't have a good feeling about that guy. I don't know if I want you to go out with him."

It's interesting to talk to my mom about her character in Wild at heart, because she sees her as a mother who's just trying to protect her baby from a bad boy. I think that's why it works so beautifully - she has conviction about what she's doing.

As someone who has been asked to ask David Lynch what his movies mean for 25 years, I'm very careful about asking artists what their art means.

There are people on the ratings board and so froth who don't want certain scenes in the film. There are people who come up and say, "What graphic love scenes. I think, How can a love scene be graphic? Have you seen Total Recall? In this R-rated movie you see a man who you've seen being in love with and sleeping with this fabulous woman shoot her right through the head. "Consider this a divorce" is supposed to be the funniest line in the movie.

Nick Сage and I can't make love in movie? That's scary. And our hero? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Using a body as a shield against bullets? Hey - the world's a big place, and people get away with what they get away with, but to attack David Lynch for doing things I've seen in many movies, that's weird.

People have forever been interested in twins.

It's always been a desire of mine to work with my parents, so Wild at Heart was a wish come true. The first day we did a scene together I came down the stairs and my mom pointed that finger at me: "Don't you dare talk to that boy again!" You know, I've seen that finger for 23 years. And I started laughing, she started laughing, then the whole crew broke up - in that moment, they all knew that she and I had been there before.

When you're playing someone who has a strong ego about themselves, you can't play them when you have the opposite opinion of the one they have of themselves.

It's very easy to get caught up in - there's a hype going on now that I haven't seen in years, and it's actually more about press than it is about an actor's work or what films they've been in.

I had a good understating about press: that it's the actor's responsibility to publicize his or her films, that the press can be fun, that it's not about hyping yourself into stardom or trying to sell yourself as a hot ticket. I think a lot of young actors now are getting caught up in that.

Unfortunately, overall, movies are a conglomerate. People buy and sell people in this business, which can get really ugly unless you have the right set of values and understand why you're doing it. Luckily, I was raised by people who'd already gotten to that point, and seen all the yuck stuff - which is probably why they originally didn't want me to act.

Even if you've gone through an average childhood, you have girlfriends who get pregnant and then have to choose whether or not to have a child. And this stuff certainly makes you think about what you're taking on. I certainly want to have children, but I could never do it until I felt I loved myself enough, and wanted to bring someone into the world because I had some kind of security.

I knew you had to go in and audition and maybe they'd hire you, and that's where you start. I had a good understanding about press: that it's the actor's responsibility to publicize his or her films.

Wild at Heart made a few people angry-they thought I was exploiting women by showing that when a woman says no she really means yes.

I left our home to work on a movie, and while I was away, my boyfriend [Billy Bob Thorton] got married, and I've never heard from him again.