Debra winger quotes

I need my family to remind me in a loving and nice way to lighten up.

In the early part of my life I carried the flame for fiery women: perky women who were not dumb.

I was the all-American face. You name it, honey - American Dairy Milk, Metropolitan Life insurance, McDonald's, Burger King. The Face That Didn't Matter - that's what I called my face.

I had a very insightful friend who warned me back when I stopped reading scripts, 'It's easier to change directions while you're still moving.' If you stop, it's harder to get started again. I still don't think I made the wrong decision, but he was right.

I make decisions for my life, not the other way around. Besides, when you have a kid, you must weigh everything against time with your child.

People pay to see movies with women looking beautiful, but I think there will be a place for me to play women looking my own age.

But I never worried about having a child in my 40s, which is unusual - normally, I'm the queen of worry.

I hope to find the roles that are age appropriate but not yearning to be younger, or parenting ad nauseam.

Denying the lines on our faces makes a comment about age and wisdom I don't care to make.

I will walk out on a scene if it's all lit and ready to go but it's not happening.

The sexiest thing in the world is to be totally naked with your wedding band on.

My grandmother gave birth to 13 children and I come from a long line of women who gave birth in their 40s.

It's no secret that I didn't love 'An Officer And A Gentleman' then, and I certainly don't love it now, so at least no one could accuse me of being inconsistent.

I have a thing with the camera. The lens is unconditional. It doesn't judge you.

The older you get, the more you've done.

I used to love going on a junket and promoting a film when it was not a 24-hour news cycle, and when there weren't so many media outlets. You could actually talk about the film.

An actress in a film starts every day with an hour and a half in front of a mirror, with hair and make-up and costumes.

I think when it comes to Botox and surgery, actresses should do it or not do it, but be honest about their choices.

A good marriage is different to a happy marriage.

I was never afraid of failure after that because, I think, coming that close to death you get kissed. With the years, the actual experience of course fades, but the flavor of it doesn't. I just had a real sense of what choice do I have but to live fully?

Writers often have a 'drunk' that is different than anyone else's. That's why it's so insidious and so damning. First of all, because they can write when they're drinking - or they think they can. A lot of writers will tell me - and this is the latest one I've heard - you drink while you're thinking about what to write, but when you actually write, you sober up.

Granted there are only seven stories in the universe. And I agree with that. But give me a great variation of those stories. And literate.

Playing big films on festivals is SO misguided. And I know where it comes from: it comes from the head of the festival thinking that he'll play with the big guys, like that's the way to do it and it's SO not the way to do it. It's where Cannes went wrong, it's where Toronto is going wrong. I mean, I got off the plane in Cannes this year and the streets were paved with posters from studio movies. Who cares about that? Why come to Cannes for that? You're going to be able to see all those films anyway - you're not going to be able to avoid them, so I don't get it. Obviously.

I remember the old joke, while women are deciding which schools the kids go to, where you're going to live, how the money's going to be spent, and where your health care is coming from, the men are out standing around the barbecue solving all the big world problems. So I think this is a well known fact and we're not breaking any new ground here.

I do not need a lot of money to be happy.

"Stand up against the wall!" That's what everybody gets offered, especially women. When women started appearing on TV again in something other than the girl or the mother role it was all, "Get up against the wall," or, "The skin underneath her fingernail would tell me that she," you know, forensic stuff. Oh, God gross. Now, they're hunting terrorists.

It's such an amazing thing to be loved for who you are.

It's fun to be loose. Just like on stage, all of your great ideas come from looseness.

I started out in stand-up when I was 18, which is really masochistic, and I did it really till I started going in movies. I did it for about three years out in LA.

Show me the story. I just want to tell a story that pulls me forward.

I want to start a trend of women as we really look. Some good things, some not so good. I am tired of looking at frozen faces.

I happen to be interested in watching a face age. I like faces of women aging so it makes me personally quite sad. That's a beautiful gift from God. If people don't want to see that anymore then I won't be in anymore movies.

I just live in the truth and think that every moment counts.

Never say never, but the thought of electively cutting oneself is beyond my grasp, and I also object to it politically. Denying the lines on our faces makes a comment about age and wisdom I don't care to make.

When I was younger I probably didn't understand something basic about tact, but I think it kept faint-hearted people at arm's distance and that's not such a bad thing, because life is short and I know the kind of people I want to work with.

Theater is all about the rehearsal process. In fact, I think a lot of times opening night there's a mixed sadness because you're finished with a lot of people's favorite part of the process, which is finding the character and discovering it, and then you get to live it.

I am lucky enough to be married to a guy who tells me I look beautiful every day.

I always loved working as an actress, but I didn't understand why I couldn't just opt out of being famous. And then I realized you can, and I think I did. And eventually, I came to understand that you can do that and also keep working.

I tend to wear outfits that match the walls.

I just want to sleep, and eat, and learn about what's going on in the world.

It's inconceivable to some people that that wouldn't be the sexiest thing to do in the whole world: to be a movie star, and make money, and be pampered, and whatever.

I think that we definitely deal with that issue and don't ignore it, the issue of drink, but that's not where it ends. I just think that what the fear is that you think alcoholic writer or whatever and you forget the intelligence that can be present. I mean so many people just write off someone who drinks as one thing.

I started out in stand-up, so it's very satisfying to make people laugh, but it usually means at your own expense.

I don't think that I'm that easy to live with. I have to be reminded that I can have fun. I need my family to remind me in a loving and nice way to lighten up.

I became an actor because I couldn't not.

I don't believe in careers. I believe in work. I'm not interested in some 'big picture that would be really good for me'.

I guess what I have to say is, "Don't do it." I don't recommend it, because, having said that, the people that should do it will do it anyway, despite the fact that I've said not to do it. Only the ones who've said, "Oh, she said not to do it," aren't going to do it, and they shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

The minute we have a pain, we want a diagnosis. So I think the minute we feel love, it's very hard to just let it be. We want to identify it, we want to catalog it, we want to keep the thing and create the environment it happened in. That's where marriage comes from! Let's make an institution out of it!

Actors always want you to believe something else even though that's the truth and to do that well it's almost a dying art.

Bad acting is the ultimate inconsideration.

You've got the whole civil rights movements emanating from the south, you've got the music that came out of the south that is the core of our current music, so for me that thinking comes out of having Dukes of Hazzard thrown in your face: that the south is a bunch of twangy people that I can't understand. So this is, hopefully, part of the movement to restore the south to its proper and rightful place in our nation... which is huge and pervasive. It's not about Texas - I'm not saying Texas doesn't have it's own unique history - but the south has this at its core.

I think it's a great thing that women went out in droves to see Sex and the City movie. I think it's wonderful and I think women have always shown they're looking both to be entertained and challenged in a theatre. I don't think women are afraid of movies that make them think; make them feel sad. The movies that I've been associated with are not exactly Sex and the City but women are leading the way to the theatre on those. They used to call it a date movie where the girl gets to choose.

I was shooting one day and it struck me that I was the age that Shirley MacLaine was when she played my mother. I had to sit down. I had to get a chair, okay? It was a weird moment.

Most bad behavior comes from insecurity.

I have enjoyed a wonderful run in films, so far, and I may, at some point, come back. But it will be in my own time and in my own style.

Just because we're on schedule is no reason to shoot bad acting. Someone once said to me, 'You're inconsiderate.' And I said, 'Inconsiderate? Bad acting is the ultimate inconsideration.' It's a collective slap to a million faces at the same time.

If I could have one prayer answered, I would pray for patience. I move so fast sometimes. I try to slow down.

There's a small club of women who are willing to age.

I love telling stories. When people interview me live I'm totally forthcoming about stories like that - as long as it's not going to be in print or recorded. It's just for whoever's in the audience. It's always been for me kind of fun and then everyone walks out of there, "She told this story about da da da" but nobody can prove it.

People who make lots of money at what they do should just shut up about it.

I don't think it is worth trying to look 10 years younger through surgery.

It's not necessarily that having an affair you get something from the other person that you're not getting from your partner, it's that you created a situation for yourself in which you're unexpressed and so maybe you feel another person allows you to express yourself.

I am one of the happiest people I know. And that's a weird place to have arrived at from being a depressed Jewish kid.

I've been acting all along. I understand that I haven't been in people's viewers, but acting has never not been a part of my life, just more time in between and less high-profile.

It's easier to change directions while you're still moving.

Once a Altman's film has been in a town, it kind of wrecks the town. It doesn't even matter what the film is because, suddenly, everybody's hip and stores start doubling prices or whatever.

When you connect with a cause, it's like falling in love.