Marian Seldes Quotes

Own the room. Confidence has nothing to do with what you look like. If you obsess over that, you'll end up being disappointed in yourself all the time. Instead, high self-esteem comes from how you feel in any moment. So walk into a room acting like you're in charge, and spend your energy on making the people around you happy. Giving confidence to others will come back to you and you'll end up feeling better about yourself.

The kind of acting I love is when you watch and you discover what you think perhaps you weren't supposed to see: the chink in the armor.

My grandmother always used to say, "If you know your past and you know where you have to go, why do you rehearse?" I always remember this and it's true. You have to start each day again-you can't repeat what you did.

If you're unhappy in a relationship, I think you just don't trust yourself for getting into another one.

An actress spends a lifetime observing people. You build up a mental library. No, not a library. Make that a repository.

I try to find humor in everything I do, because I think all great plays - even great tragedies - have enormous humor in them.

If I had a religious belief, I would want it to be as strong as my belief in the theater.

I had never heard anyone play like Benny Goodman and had never seen anyone like him on the stage. I realize now that what impressed me and stayed with me in memory was - the sounds he made. He played so purely. The music seemed to come from him, not just the instrument he played with such mastery.

I have had a career in which, almost without exception, every single person Ive worked with has helped me.

There's no trick of teaching acting. Either someone wants to do it and is gifted, or not.

In Milly Barranger, Margaret Webster has found the perfect biographer. In Margaret Webster, Milly Barranger has found her perfect subject. She brings to vivid life a fascinating and important theater figure whose public and private lives were of equal interest. In this carefully researched book, Webster's colleagues, lovers, and friends shine as brightly as she did. I wish she were here to read it.