Tatiana Maslany Quotes

Trust your gut. You know yourself, so don't let somebody else tell you who you are.

Have fun, be yourself, enjoy life and stay positive.

Go with your gut every single time. It’s never, ever wrong. Even if feels like everybody else is telling you that you need to do this or do that. Your gut is your artist and who you are as a person and what makes you special, and what makes you an interesting performer. Never try to be something you’re not.

There's something about music that makes me feel like a different person, that feels like an escape.

It's wild to be seen differently and have more visibility, but it's rewarding.

I love nerdy work. I love writing notes. I try to go back, as much as I can, to feed what happens and why they do what they do.

Sometimes I'll go into a shop and speak in a different accent to see if I can pull it off. But then somebody will be like, 'Where did you say you were from again?' And then I panic, and my accent dissolves, and I pretend like I wasn't doing it in the first place.

The most bizarre demographics come up to me. Men in their 50s come up to me and are like, "Alison is my favorite. I hated her at first, and now I love her." I don't know what that says about people's psychology.

So much of how you look at yourself in the mirror reflects how you feel about yourself, and how you comport yourself.

I'm at the transition place myself, still playing high school girls but moving to a stage when I'm playing older roles and going to the places of stillness and wisdom and knowledge and weight. It's exciting and scary.

I was in a Nativity play as a kid. Back then, I played the donkey.

I've learned a lot about the limits of what I can do, as an artist, or what I'm willing to do. It's a lot of responsibility to carry a show and to speak to people on different levels.

Clothing and makeup and hair and all of that so much indicates the kind of person you are inside and the person you are presenting on the outside. Sometimes they are in conflict, and sometimes they are the same. That psychology of the exterior informing the interior is just so interesting.

Young women are now looking at me for cues. That's definitely been a responsibility. But I feel like I was ready to take on something like this because I wanted to be challenged and I wanted to be afraid, and that's definitely what it's done for me.

I've worked on shows where the lead actor doesn't know their lines, doesn't care, and it affects everybody - the crew, the director, the other actors. It's definitely a responsibility.

My mom's a translator, my dad's a woodworker; that's the world I grew up in, that's the world I'm most comfortable in. The whole idea of Hollywood or any of that other stuff that unfortunately goes along with film, that wasn't part of my upbringing, thankfully.

There's something really unique about Orphan Black is that it has a lot of female leads, so it's about a lot of women's stories, but it's not women’s stories in terms of trying to find a guy or keep a guy; it's about entirely other things.

'Orphan Black' allows for people to have debates and theories and allegiances to different characters; to trust characters and hate other characters, but it doesn't tell you who is good or bad or right or wrong. That's the most exciting storytelling in my book.

I love people, watching people interact. It's a lot of psychology. We learn about ourselves by watching other people's lives on the screen.

The way people love sci-fi is how I love cartoons.

As an actor, you're listening to the other person and always trying to be present and take everything they're giving you, but when they're not there you have to produce that yourself.

It's the reason we go to films and watch television: to escape the mundane nature of life and see another world and see ourselves in that other world. I think that's what sci-fi does so well.

Sexuality is so much more complex than our boobs. My sexuality isn't me as an object to be looked at. It's the way I say "hello" to somebody, the way I sit with somebody. A body is just a body. But we're really afraid of bodies. They hold a lot of power - I think that's why people can try to shame them so easily, because they are so powerful.

I think the improv also helps with the imagination of dealing this person across from me who's not physically there. When you do an improv scene, you're usually working on a blank stage and creating the props and creating the environment.

We're living in a world where the response is really instantaneous, even though it's delayed by a few months. It comes at you pretty fast.

Going back is a nice way to give definition to each of the characters because they are so vastly different. I would never want them to get blended together.

My brothers are so much a part of who I am, and such a large part of my heart and my drive. I've never had a kid, but I understand that whole, "I would kill for my family" kind of thing. I understood it, it resonated with me. It's a very primal, animal thing that you feel for your family.

I love performing. I love doing improv. It's a totally terrifying experience, but it's something that I've always felt so strongly about and that I'm kind of obsessed with. And just as an actor, it's a great exercise. It's a great playground, you know, to try things out and to work on your skills. Because the mandate of improv is kind of the same as acting: It's all about your scene partner, it's all about being present and in the moment and exploring together as a team, a collaboration.

I wanted to get everything right. I was super nerdy and academic. I got so much satisfaction out of getting good grades.

I'm fascinated with psychology, and with why a person walks the way they walk or why they walk into a room the way they do or why we are the way we are, and it's not exclusive to the psychology of a character.

As a kid, I wanted to be a boy because I equated that with strength. There's a problem with that. It's only growing into my own womanhood that I realize how warped that is that I was attributing strength to male qualities.

Those darker sides, the things that we don't want to admit about ourselves - that's what excites me.

I think the fact that my parents are still, "Hey, great, that's great!" and not, "We need you to do this and be a star!" - it was never like that. My mom's a translator, my dad's a woodworker; that's the world I grew up in, that's the world I'm most comfortable in. The whole idea of Hollywood or any of that other stuff that unfortunately goes along with film, that wasn't part of my upbringing, thankfully.

I'm so inspired and stimulated by the work that it doesn't ever feel like work.

As artists, you always want to push yourself. There's always new territory.

All the foundation work you plant in the early seasons pay off in stronger storylines deep into our seasons. I think that only aids in performance.

I have trouble sleeping, at the end of the night. There's a lot of stimulus and my brain is processing a lot of different arcs and personalities. I'm always processing things, so I don't sleep.

I think being idle is quite hard for me to do.

I'm incredibly close to my family. I have two younger brothers, they're both artists and actors; and their work and the way they see the world inspires me. We've been making films together since we were kids, in our backyard.

I fell in love with 'Star Trek' after J. J. Abrams's movie. I'm so into that.

We do long-form-style improv. Our focus was characters and telling a long arc story over about an hour and a half. It was closer to a one-act play than one-off sketches.

For me, comedy literally is way more terrifying than doing drama, so it's always about stretching what I think I can do and putting myself out there in different context.

It's always been my dream to just continually do really cool indie movies - character-driven stuff.

My brothers and I always did improv stuff in our basement with our friends; we're super nerds, and that was our way of spending a Friday night.

My mom taught me German before I knew English. And I went to French immersion school.

You're hot for two seconds, and you're struggling to get work again. If it were easy, I don't think that's a good place for an artist to work from.

Auditions are not a natural environment, and you feel judged, even though everyone is just excited to find the right person.

Comedy scares me a lot. I feel like it's way harder than drama. I think my safety net is definitely drama and I would love to kind of be able to be able to push into the comedy world and do something kind of like a Christopher Guest kind of style show. That, to me, is my kind of comedy. Like, Ricky Gervais comedy. That's my kind of thing.

I try to get roles that challenge me in what I can do and who I think I can portray. For me, it's about creating characters with really fascinating stories, because that's what I like to watch on TV.

I grew up in Canada, man - we all had rinks in our backyards because we'd ice down the grass with a hose and build a skating rink.