I don't really have a choice. I'm getting older. Annette Bening More Quotes by Annette Bening More Quotes From Annette Bening In a film, if you can capture what's going on underneath, you can begin to make a connection between the character and the people watching it. Annette Bening connections character people And if there's anything movies can do in a way that I just love, and I love as an audience is, "Show me something I don't know about. Show me something I haven't seen." Annette Bening show-me shows way I think where I've instinctively found myself is that I am somewhat guarded in my public life. Being interviewed or being photographed or just in public attention, I have a certain reserve. But when I'm working I feel like I'm very open. At least I like to believe that I feel like nothing is held back when I'm in front of a camera. That's my job. Annette Bening jobs believe thinking Oh, honey, I'm from Oklahoma! This is who I am - middle-class all the way! Annette Bening oklahoma who-i-am class I don't see myself as competing with other actresses. I mean, I went through a time when I was in New York, and I was going to lots of auditions and trying to get parts, but even then, you're not really competing with the other actresses. There is a competition going on, but it's not like something you can win in that way. Annette Bening new-york winning mean I always wonder about people's history and their lives, especially people that are a little bit more distant, who obviously have had some kind of a thing and you know there's some reason why they're not able to connect. It's not because they don't want to. They don't have the ability. Annette Bening want littles people I've always been pretty levelheaded. In show business you need to have a certain internal stability. Annette Bening stability certain needs We're not all evil or all good, and we all make mistakes to one degree or another. Annette Bening degrees evil mistake That's one of the most important things about acting is not just when you're speaking but when you're taking in from someone else. So I often go to the theater and I'm watching the person who's not talking. I love that. Annette Bening acting important It used to be the one or the other, right? You were the 'bad girl' or the 'good girl' or the 'bad mother' or the 'good mother,' 'the horrible businesswoman who eschewed her children' or 'the earth mother who was happy to be at home baking pies,' all of that stuff that we sort of knew was a lie. Annette Bening girl mother children I knew I wanted children in my life. The acting was always in relation to it. Life at home is chaos. They're wonderful. They're such interesting human beings. I just love it. I'm lucky. Annette Bening home children interesting A lot of acting is working with your own psyche in order to allow yourself to be open and reveal yourself. But then of course there's a healthy part of you that says, "Well, don't do that." You know, you're going to be in front of people. You could look foolish. You could get it wrong. You could be too big or too small or not realistic or whatever those things are. People might criticize you. There's all kinds of reasons not to be open. But you do want to be open. Annette Bening healthy acting people The films that are interesting you never can stop... there's no end point, you just keep thinking and musing about it. Annette Bening film interesting thinking Things either become unclear in a story or they're just ambiguous with no real point. So defined gray area with clarity that also works in the narrative, that's tricky. Annette Bening clarity tricky real I can be very snobby about fiction, especially contemporary fiction. I can be kind of overly demanding, I think. But this is, I think, a good time. A lot of fiction comes out right now. So, I like reading the memoir. I love memoir, the biography, auto bio. Annette Bening be-kind reading thinking Maybe that's one of the virtues of the 2016 election that we're going through is all of this racism and xenophobia and sexism and whatever else you want to say is being exposed, maybe that's a blessing. I'm trying to look at the positive side of what's been happening in our country, which is frightening. Annette Bening racism blessing country Modern acting is method acting, most of it. And there are sort of different schools, so I guess I'm not really from one school or another. I had a number of different teachers but they were all kind of drawing from the same pool, which is - What do you want? What are you doing to get what you want? And, what is in the way? These are basic acting questions. Knowing the answers to those questions. So you're talking about objectives and actions and obstacles. That's a sort of shorthand that gives you a language. Annette Bening teacher giving school There's a lot of different ways of going about teaching acting and ultimately you have to just kind of create your own. You have to be the author of your own acting school in a way. I mean you can take from this and this and you can watch people and you can watch performances on the stage. You can watch movies. But ultimately you have to figure it out for yourself. Annette Bening teaching mean school One of the things on a very practical level as an actor or actress is that when you do a play, you do the entire story every time you do it. You have eight shows a week. You have a rehearsal process of four to five to six weeks. And then once you're in performance, everybody else goes away and you're there with your fellow actors and the audience and the material and your life becomes about that. And you go through the story from the beginning to the end every time you do it and depending on how long you do it, that's where the craft comes in. Annette Bening audience week long Movie is a near art form. It's showbiz and people want to make money. And generally people are financing things because they think it will make money whether it's a cable news show, a cable show, or a feature film, or whatever it is. So that's the part of it that drives it, I think, is really the dollar. Annette Bening people art thinking
