Karen Allen Quotes

I've always done things the hard way. I was born like a piece of tangled yarn. The job is trying to untangle it, and I'll probably go on doing it for the rest of my life.

Eventually you love people - friends or lovers - because of their flaws.

I've never done anything for money. My first love is things of limited commercial appeal. I could be happy doing Shakespeare for the rest of my life.

I'm about as healthy as a person can be. I quit smoking seven or eight years ago.

I thought, I need to reinvent myself. I want every day of life to be wonderful, fascinating, interesting, creative. And what am I gonna do to make that happen?

I've had so many people just come up to me and say, 'When you came up on the screen, everybody in the theater applauded.' It's just so sweet, really.

I'm always surprised when people say, "Oh, it got such mixed reviews." I guess I didn't read them.

Unfortunately, I feel as actors we have to fight for the right to really go in as many directions as possible.

CGI is to me like watching a cartoon. It can be effective, if it's done well. A lot of times you don't feel any real risk. You're watching a bunch of computer-generated graphics.

I watch many, many, many independent films every year that you see once in a film festival and they're never heard of ever again. Many of them are very, very good.

For me, the motivation really was to work with Al Pacino. To me, that seemed like an incredible opportunity, just a learning opportunity because I thought so highly of him.

There is a difference when you work with actors who have worked on the stage. When we're out there in front of an audience eight times a week, you can't do it on your own.

There's something so wonderful about being an actor in New York.

I said to myself, 'I've waited a long time in my life to have a child, and I'm missing it, I want to continue to have a career, but not this way.

I'm from a generation of fantastic actresses. It's a big pool of really wonderful actresses, and so many of them we never even get to see on the screen anymore.

If there are no other wonderful roles that come my way, I have a quite an interesting, dynamic life.

People want to see a movie that casts a mature woman across from a mature man.

When I read a film script, I kind of see it in my head and I see the moments that shape what I understand the character to be. There's very little time for rehearsal.

I feel as though I would be delighted to come back into working in the film world, and working in the theater world again. I'm just gonna see what happens.

I try to offer as much as I can to the director so he has as much to work with as possible to create the character that, really, he wants to create in a sense.

I don't know if I've ever played a character who's close to me. There have been some elements of myself in different roles. Sometimes, I show one side of myself and then completely conceal the other.

A lot of times when I've been offered film series and stuff, if they shoot in Los Angeles, I lose interest.

I just felt like I had to create a life for myself where I was more independent.

I don't necessarily like being defined by my profession.

Scripts are kind of a bare bones type of reading material.

Let's just say I decided that while my son is young I don't want to do projects that would take me away for months.

Sometimes I think candor is the only kindness.

If you just work on your upper body, you're not going to be a full-range dancer or performer. You've got to work in all directions as much as you possibly can.