Rachel weisz quotes

The happiest days of my youth were when my brother and I would run through the woods and feel quite safe.

As a child I was the best tree climber in our neighbourhood, I was like a little monkey. I've never been afraid of hurting myself or a little physical discomfort.

I haven't only been offered Hasidic roles.

I want to play interesting women.

I love the way girls in London dress; it's so different to the American 'blow-dry and immaculate grooming' thing.

If you try to go for a laugh, it's death to the comedy. Personally, that's how I approach comedy. But I'm no expert.

I feel like I'm one of the many working mothers. And I only have one child. I know working mums who have three or four. It's definitely a challenge but it's a wonderful challenge to be able to do both.

Normally, I would do research. For The Constant Gardener, I played an activist, so I went to meet activists. You can find them dotted around. But with The Brothers Bloom, I couldn't meet a nutty heiress who lived in a bubble in a mansion. There was no one to meet. So this was just an active imagining, a daydream.

I just kind of muddled through in my 20s. I did whatever I got offered, to be honest, to pay the bills. I didn't really know what I was doing. There are some actors in their 20s who are very sure. I wasn't very sure what I was doing. I feel like I've only really just got going.

Most of the time we do nothing, myself included, I think the lesson I learned from [playing humanitarian Tessa in The Constant Gardner] is that a lot of drops make up an ocean. If people would stand up and say what they believe in maybe we can make a difference. Helping one person is better than nothing. Just do something.

I'm too disorganized.

I am definitely a worrier.

The older you get the more capable you get at managing life.

My real fantasy if I was to drop out would be to live in a mobile home and be a hippie and drive around festivals and have millions of children - children with dreadlocks and nose rings - and play the flute.

The thing about acting is even if you get technically more skilled at what you do, every time you begin a film or a play you're terrified. You don't know if you're going to pull it off. Every film and every story has its own set of challenges. I've never felt like, oh yeah, that's it, nailed it! You can never sit and rest. That's why it's such an exciting job. It's beginning again every time you begin again. New story, new character, new place, new time, new director. It's like moving to a different planet and trying to figure out how to live there.

For me, being a mum has been a really, really instinctive thing.

The most interesting characters are those you're drawn to, then repelled by, and then come to understand. All that tension - I live that. But I don't plan the tension. It's just something that should happen.

In L.A., unless you've just won an Oscar or you're Mr. Studio Head, no one talks to you. Even at parties.

Because I think in order to get famous you have to be known for something. Like 'You're the romantic comedy girl' or 'You're the Oscar-winning whatever girl.'

It's also that comedians don't have the kind of narcissism that actors have. They're writers who perform their own material. It's more interesting. And they're sexy because they risk more. Stand-up comedians risk more than anyone.

I prefer smaller movies because they tend to be more about character than about story.

At the end of the day, flirting is a pretty universal language. Americans are more direct. British people are more indirect about everything

I love the international feeling In New Yokk. Different foods. Different people. There's everything here. Museums, theatre, there's so much to do I feel guilty about not doing too many things.

Working with a green screen is easy. It's just like being a kid. But it's not nearly as satisfying.

I prefer being as far from the centre of celebrity as possible.

I am proud of what I am. I am a librarian.

People still kill in the name of religion. We haven't evolved to the point where we're one tribe called humans.

I think London's sexy because it's so full of eccentrics.

Every new mother wonders, 'what will I pass on to my child'? Hunger is one inheritance no mother wants to give her child, yet millions of poor women have for generations. Help the World Food Programme break this cycle. No child should inherit hunger.

That was me under the bath and the water being held down. The director wanted it to look as real as possible so he told Keanu, in front of me, don't go easy on her. So it was scary.

I think things are funny when the character is taking it totally seriously.

You never know how things will turn out. And you can't really say it turned out wrong. Whatever happens, happens. The important thing is that you followed your gut.

When you're doing comedy, you're not trying to be funny. I think things are funny when the character is taking it totally seriously. I think when people are winking, it becomes slapstick, it becomes something else.

The bond between mother and baby is so interesting. Women have been giving birth since the beginning of time, but when it happens to you it feels like a miracle.

I really wanted to do a comedy. I've done a lot of drama, and comedy was the one genre I was not being offered. So I became obsessive about getting one. I tried with two little parts in comedies that were more mainstream, I was kind of fumbling around, and then I read The Brothers Bloom and knew it was the one I wanted to jump into. Did it take adjusting? Actually, it's not really any different from doing drama.

I think mystery is kind of great. I don't know anything about Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn or Ava Gardner - not really - and I like that. I love watching their movies because they're my personal movie stars. I don't know what they eat and who their trainer is.

As an actress, it's part of your job to be able to imagine just about anything - even if it's not within your personal experience.

Bad things happen when people work together. Everything goes out of control.

As Ralph's character begins to discover the political thriller aspect of the film, he falls deeper in love with his wife, so the two run together. That's the beauty of this film. It has fast pace and excitement, but it also has heart and soul.

And I guess, I guess it's a humanist film. It's not really a spiritual film and it's, you know, it's saying that we're all one tribe of humans and we're on this little rock, floating through the universe and (Amenabar) has these (transitional shots of) POVs where you see humans like ants.

You know, you can't see or touch and isn't embodied. But they were all fallible, the Gods. And they would kind of rise and fall. You know, they all, like Achilles, Icarus, you know, they all had their high points and their low points.

To come to the Oscars for the first time and be seven months pregnant is quite a thing!

I like acting too much and it's too, I'm just too busy doing that and I'm too hungry for it, to get behind the camera. I mean, unless I could act in it, too. I don't think I've got the right brain. I'm too disorganized.

I'm a storyteller, I'm an actor, an entertainer.

I always do my interviews face to face.

If I went out in killer heels and full makeup, blow dry, the whole thing — anyone dressed up like that could be intimidating to men and women, really. It's so, look at me. Do you know what I mean? But I love women.

I don't believe your soul mate has to share your politics.

You get perspective on things when you're away from your child, and in a way, your love for them becomes even deeper.

Organized, yeah. And those who are so sure that their God is the right God that they believe it's ok to kill another person who doesn't believe in their God.

Seeing someone you know be good at something is really appealing. Seeing how Darren Aronofsky behaved on set, it was another aspect of him, the director. He'd never directed me at home in the kitchen before. It was just seeing a whole other aspect of someone. It was really, really exciting. I loved it.

I'm pretty private about my neuroses. You're not neurotic if you talk to yourself - everyone does - you're only neurotic if you hear an answer.

I could never write. I would just be too lonely. What's great about acting is, it's so collaborative.

I love to take baths.

There's not much room for eccentricity in Hollywood, and eccentricity is what's sexy in people.

You have to be quite stupid to act.

I don't judge the character at all. It's a bit like being someone's defense lawyer - you have to believe in their innocence in order to defend them.

The Pagan model of religion because, in the Pagan model, there were lots and lots of Gods and Goddesses. They were all incredibly beautiful and there were statues of them everywhere, which is the equivalent of magazines, or whatever, today. And they were fallible, which is different from being mono-, you know, Jewish or Islam (where) you have the infallible, monotheistic God.

I'd like to be wanted for my body, too! As an actor I want to play all different kinds of women - independent women but also very vulnerable women.

It's hard to remember that life is a miracle. We're just living it and we forget that.

I don't know anything about science.

I was an English-literature major, and that's all about stories and narratives.

He [John Le Carré] really paid tribute to the people who are willing to risk their own lives to fight injustice - they are greater men and women than I.

I was offered more work after the Oscar. When I was younger, I would take whatever I was offered because it was money and work and experience. In a way, choosing is the hard part. I know that's a luxury problem, but it's true. I try to go where passion takes me.

Film is such a director's medium; you're really in their hands in terms of the real storytelling. As an actor, you can give a performance moment to moment and some of your takes will be used and some of them won't. I think there are great films you can make with bad performances, and vice versa. There are all combinations of those things. It's really down to the director what happens, I think, so that's why it's really good to work with very talented, bold directors.

Now we're in a recession, and at war, so people want to see this chihuahua movie, The Fountain. To be told to come to terms with death, that death is the road to all - it's a very intense subject. But as with movies that are very unusual, that have come to be thought of as very interesting, one finds out at the time that they were not understood. So who knows? We'll see. A lot of people really, really loved it, and a lot of people didn't get it.

I find Hollywood really toxic.

We're on this rock and we can choose to treat each other well or we can choose to kill each other and be uncivilized. I don't know. It's very tragic. It's a very tragic thing to think about.

If I'm just in dungarees, I don't think I would intimidate anyone.

I would LOVE to be in the Star Trek sequel! Yeah! I would love to! I better write that letter to J.J.[Abrahams]

I think acting came later in life when I went to college. I started out there. I wasn't a big star in the school plays or anything. I guess I just really liked stories. I was an English-literature major, and that's all about stories and narratives. Film and theater are very powerful storytelling mediums. You sit in a dark room and enter another world. I love that as a member of the audience, and I sort of wanted to get on the other side.

I wasn't a person who was longing forever to have a baby; the desire came up suddenly.

Botox should be banned for actors, as steroids are for sportsmen. Acting is all about expression; why would you want to iron out a frown?

L.A. makes you feel ugly.

I'm slightly unsure as to what my goal is. I just keep doing jobs.

I do read movie blogs. I think what's really interesting - Probably everyone says this, but what's interesting is it, it takes away the power, from the newspaper magnates, so be it Murdoch or whatever. I mean, it's like the people taking it back. Isn't it? I mean, do people talk about this all the time?

In reality, the main thing that keeps me awake at night is probably the destruction of the planet that's what gets me pretty upset.

It's really hard to make a good film; it's really, really hard. So, the director's very important, and a character that can be described with more than one or two adjectives, maybe with contradictions. Contradictions are always good because that's truthful.

You know, in America, Christian fundamentalism vs. science. You know, be it teaching Darwinian evolutionary theory or stem cell res- You know, the whole thing, and then the issue of women being educated in Middle Eastern - I mean, it just seems so contemporary. In terms of spirituality, it's interesting because I actually think (her character in Agora) Hypatia is very spiritual.

I've always been fascinated by activists, people who will devote their life to a cause, people who go to India and to Africa and put their life in jeopardy to do what they believe is right.

(Human) beings, in Pagan times would kind of like, listen to the stories and, they could kind of, identify - . They were, like, bigger than them and more successful than them or more beautiful, but they had these human fallibilities. Which is like celebrities now. It's like, 'oh, she's in rehab. Oh, she's unfaithful. Oh, they're divorced. Oh, she's anorexic. Oh, he's had a nose job.' You know, whatever it might be.

I don't like travelling. Which is ridiculous. And it's not because I'm afraid of dying on the plane or anything. I just like to stay at home.

I'm thinking of doing more theatre. It makes me very happy.

Fear is like the steam that fires the combustion engine. You need fear to get a performance going.

I was advised by an American agent when I was about 19 to change my surname.

Well, I'm not at all like the tough, sexy femme fatale in Confidence but it's fun to play people who're really different from you, from different cultures and places. I suppose I'm a bit quieter than most of the people I play.

I didn't think the teachers had the right to tell me what to do. I would just disobey, talk in the classroom, get very bad grades.

When I play a part, I never think about likability.

I just think that things get easier as you get older and wiser and more experienced. You get more confident about who you are as you get older. I find that really comforting.

Often Hollywood crews go into third world countries and I don't believe they behave well.

It is a political thriller. It's very action packed and it's very exciting, but at the same time it's a very big soulful love story about longing and loss. They're not separate, they're completely dependent on one another.

I moved to New York last year and I love it. It's a huge change and I've always wanted to spend time there. It's like a more intense London, and everything's up a few notches. The lights are brighter, the pace is faster and the food's better.

I don't think balance is something you get from someone else; it's something women have to find from within. For me, finding balance is still a work in progress.

I go and see music all the time.

I have absolutely no empathy for camels. I didn't care for being abused in the Middle East by those horrible, horrible, horrible creatures. They don't like people. It's not at all like the relationship between horses and humans.

I think if you ask the audience to like you, it's all over.

People believe in you more after you've won an Oscar, but it's up to you what choices you make.

I think actors have a choice of drawing attention to themselves or living on the outskirts.

I'm not confident around compliments or being celebrated, and I'm not comfortable with the thought of envy, which some people thrive on.

I think that in big-budget movies there's a lot of other stuff going on besides acting, like special effects.

With a group of people, a troupe of actors in the theater, you go out on tour, and you're like a traveling circus. It's very sociable, and there's a real community, and it's very intense, and then you may never see them again. That was very appealing. I mean, it wasn't consciously appealing, but I think a lot of actors like that.

Eccentricity is what's sexy in people.