Quotes from Joan Allen

I have three wonderful siblings, and we all pitched in equally to help our mother.

When I read something, first I have an instinctual, emotional response to it. But of course, acting isn't only just feeling an instinct for what's going on in the moment with the character. You have to be able to carve it out and consider, follow, and create the whole journey that the character you play is going through.

I never liked the bar scene. I tried to like it. I would give it a try every three or four months. I'd think, tonight I'm going out. But I never met anybody in that circumstance.

I think of myself more as a character actor than that ingenue leading lady, who started out something like Michelle Pfeiffer, or Jessica Lange. I'm a bit quirkier than that.

It's such a great feeling to make people laugh. I know I've made people cry or want to slit their wrists, but to make people laugh is a very intoxicating, wonderful thing.

I didn't really think about being a movie star. I was more about theater.

I think the people who cast films tend to think of me in regard to strong women with integrity and a lot of it has been very good.

I think that I do separate myself a fair amount. And I don't feel like I am representing women. That's up to however people interpret it once they sort of see it.

There are not many things that can happen much worse to a family than having a member taken and not knowing what happened to them.

I think ties are great and Kathy Bates is an actress whose work I've admired tremendously over many years, and I feel a certain kinship with her, we both came from an extensive theater background.

I just try and do the best with every role I get to do. Hopefully the experience in itself is a good experience and people will want to work with me.

Everything starts with what's on the page, what a writer has come up with. And whether it is a big studio film or independent film, is the story being well told? Is it interesting? Is the character interesting? And is there something about the character that may stretch me?

I had gone through a mother having dementia in the last couple of years of her life. She was in a nursing facility in my little hometown area of northern Illinois, so I got to see a lot of other patients there in various stages of the disease. I had a firsthand exposure to it in a pretty big way.

I was the good girl. The straight A student, on the honour roll, part of the choir... I played the cello badly. I did plays.

How do we escape who we are? I think, going to college, I felt freer. I loved the clean slate. I wasn't known as the sort of nerdy, studious girl. I met gay people for the first time in my life. I needed that expansion from a very conservative little town.

My mother had very poor hearing for many years, until she went basically into - I guess I would call it a psychotic break. She was OK one day, and the next day she was completely cuckoo, violent, paranoid.