Romola Garai Quotes

I can't spend the rest of my life being pretty in a bonnet.

My alter egos have changed a lot over the years. When I was a child, I was a black horse called Storm. Whinnying and jumping over bamboo poles in the garden took up pretty much my entire childhood.

Female ambition is such a complicated thing to play because it is an aggressive quality, and people respond very badly to women exhibiting any kind of aggression.

Motherhood so often comes in conflict with women's capacity to express and live their own lives.

I can only do something that my sister or my daughter, if I have one, could watch and feel positive about.

We live in a society where children are expected to become adults overnight.

I realise there's an innate paradox in promoting oneself on the one hand and saying, 'Oh, I don't want to be famous,' on the other.

I don't really want to do things that I feel like are going to send out a message that I don't really want to sign up for.

I have a very strong, probably slightly aggressive personality, and so that just ends up coming out regardless of what I try to do.

I feel that it's important to fail now and again. For instance, if I go for a job and I don't get it, that makes me not a better person, but more balanced, more aware of what life is really like.

I just don't believe you're capable of being an actor unless you have a desire to experience your emotions in a public way.

I have always been interested in gender politics, so I'm not that keen on doing things that don't represent a truth about women.

I love science fiction. I read a lot of science fiction.

As a kid, I really loved 'Jane Eyre,' I used to fantasise that the past was so much better and my lifetime was crap.

Films about women and their concerns are seen as frivolous, limited and, most damaging of all, niche.

If you are an actress in L.A., on your 40th birthday they should just hand you the keys to the lunatic asylum.

I'd actually really love to review books and films and plays, but you can't be an artist and a critic. I would love it if I could.

Postwar Europe was morally stagnant, and there was a lot of neo-conservatism.

I wish I was a more adventurous person in a way. But actually, security is a really big deal for me.

I get quite disappointed that we're still telling stories that I think are problematic in terms of what they're saying about women.

I get grumpy about the innate conservatism of our tastes; I love bold theatre, and I get annoyed when a heritage piece is really successful.

Women don't question themselves when they enter into a story that has male characters, but men do question the validity of a female narrative.

I cheated at the Model United Nations when I was 13 and had to get up and apologise in front of the whole conference.

Acting is a strange job because your control is very limited.

I love '30 Rock.' Absolutely love it. It's a game-changing show.

I want people to think I'm sexy, but to know also that I've got an ordinary body and not feel intimidated.

I think with the best actors, emotion is something that has no kind of check in them.

I would like to know that I was still going to be employed as a woman well into my 60s. In acting terms, a career that spans a lifetime is a very hard thing to achieve, particularly as a woman.

You don't have to conform to a very specific aesthetic today, whereas 1950s women definitely had to.

It's hard for actors to have to deal with the fact that they pour so much into their character, but the audience might have a negative assessment of them.

I think it's very repressive for a woman to be constantly told that she has to make films about women to better represent women, but then the reverse is not found.

The worst thing you can do as a performer is to judge your character in any way, positively or negatively.

Normally, when youre working on something, there are other characters that you have alliances with, and you have unified goals with some characters.

I don't really want to play parts that I think are not fully developed or fleshed out, especially with female roles.

I think if I was ever really going to be more serious about writing I'd have to try and find some way to do it with other people. I do find the silence kind of eerie.

Our conception of 1950s underwear is a lovely vintage aesthetic, but actually, wearing stockings with no elastic and a girdle was heavy duty.

I've worked with actors who tell everyone what to do in the scene - that makes me go pretty atomic.

I'm fundamentally a busy person; I spend my time doing useful things and profoundly useless things!

A passion for any novel, and any character, can crystallise your ideas when you really need to be as open as possible as a performer.

If I have to spend prolonged periods of time in a trailer, I go mad. Stuck in a metal box doing nothing, I lie there paralysed with boredom.

Nowadays, most women just assume they have a right to be in the workplace, and any kind of discrimination they suffer is sort of more creeping.

It's a sad fact that a lot of those countries who haven't been involved in the war in Iraq have taken far more responsibility for rehoming people displaced by the war than Britain has done.

I realise there's an innate paradox in promoting oneself on the one hand and saying, 'Oh, I don't want to be famous, ' on the other.