Vanessa Redgrave Quotes

Integrity is so perishable in the summer months of success.

We all come to the theater with baggage; The baggage of our daily lives, the baggage of our problems, the baggage of our tragedies, the baggage of being tired. It doesn't matter what age you are. But if our hearts get opened and released - well, that's what theater can do, and does sometimes, and everyone is thankful when that happens.

The people I admire most are those who struggle for everyone.

You can't be striving to please; you must be striving to get to the heart of the matter.

Ask the right questions if you're going to find the right answers.

A conservative frame of mind is very limiting for an actor, and a human being, too.

I think the theatre is as essential to civilization as safe, pure water.

The arts stop society going rotten and mad.

Theater and poetry were what helped people stay alive and want to go on living.

The great writers like Chekhov know that tragedy and laughter are just a few steps from each other ... but it took me a long time as an actress to learn that. Actually Arthur Miller taught me in the Seventies. We were making a CBS TV drama of his play Playing for Time about Auschwitz but the characters were laughing. It was a big insight for me to realise that that was what's called gallows humour, in this case worse than the gallows, that humans need to laugh and make jokes in order to survive.

How can there be democracy if the leadership in the United States and Britain don't uphold the values which my father's generation fought the Nazis, millions of people gave their lives against the Soviet Union's regime, didn't they? Because of what? Democracy. And what democracy meant. No torture, no camps, no detention forever or without trial, without charges. In solitary confinement. Those techniques which are not just alleged, they have actually been written about by the FBI. I don't think it's being far left - I hope that I'm wrong to consider that it's far left to uphold the rule of law.

What I didn't understand was that the personal and the political go together. I felt at the time I had to sacrifice my children's present for their future. It seemed an either/or. I didn't realise that by being with one's own children I would have had a better understanding of the ones who are not my own. I was thinking of them but I didn't spend the time that they needed from me. It's a tribute to them that they came out so well.

One of the joys of cinema is that, given the right circumstances, and the genius director, an incredibly wonderfully actor can become the embodiment of his character.

Theater helps people keep sane.

I've opened my mouth on a lot of subjects. And I thought the more prestige you get, I'd have the power to do what I like. It's not true.

As a mother you have got to have a view for now and a view for the future.

I give myself to my parts as to a lover.

One must never comment as an actor, never show that a character is shallow or vindictive, but let that be conveyed. I mean, none of us thinks of ourselves as being vindictive or shallow - perhaps we should.

On one occasion, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons and myself were due to appear at the Sarajevo film festival and were turned off a UN plane on orders from Geneva. We had to get local journalists to transport the films in for us. I tell you this only to demonstrate that festivals can be a lifeline. But, after all the difficulties I'd had in getting there, in 1996 I found myself being flown in on a four-seater RAF plane as an official guest, endorsed by the British Embassy. Ironically, the film I was to present was Mission: Impossible.

A theater is being given over to market forces, which means that a whole generation that should be able to do theater as well as see it is being completely deprived

Shakespeare lets us see real people undergoing real processes, with real feelings

The society Shakespeare knew was heading for tremendous change, and he seems to have recognized that and written about it in a coded way. I understand those codes, I think

The stage is actor's country. You have to get your passport stamped every so often or they take away your citizenship.

My dear colleagues, I thank you very very much for this tribute to my work. I think that Jane Fonda and I have done the best work of our lives, and I salute you and I pay tribute to you, and I think you should be very proud that in the last few weeks you have stood firm and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression. And I pledge to you that I will continue to fight against anti-Semitism and fascism.

What a script says that isn't dialogue is as important as the spoken word.

When somebody can't reveal what they're after - whether by word or by how the camera is set up, lighting, etcetera - it's like an electronic beep beep; it interferes very much with what we actors can do. And, after all, the director wants the actors to be bringing forth the best that they can, according to whatever vision he has.

I was surprised when I was asked to play Miss Daisy and wondered if I could - only in part because she was Jewish but, also because she was a Southern woman who has hardly opened her mouth before she declares she's not prejudiced, and yet everything she does shows how totally prejudiced she is.

We will always want films ... that basically are centred on young people, because young people is the way we live on, we older people, insofar as we live on.

A deeper truth the camera can see can be more surprising than even the director imagined it could be. That's a wonderful thing that grows and happens in films.

An awful lot of filmmaking and playmaking is taken over by marketers and publicists, who set about to tell people what to think. And people feel safer that way. But it's not safe, and the whole wonderful thing that cinema and filmmakers can contribute is to go into the not-safe land of real life.

You can't do what you've been asked to do unless you do the best you can. And roughly speaking, the best you can do is to be very available as a character and actor to the people you're acting with. That's equally important, whether the camera's on the other person or on you.

There always comes a moment where all the departments in a film need to work together. And if a director, his first assistant director, and cinematographer have a very clear vision, then everybody does work together.