Quotes from Laura Dern

It's interesting to play a real-life person who has already been a character on 'Saturday Night Live.'

At the end of the day, you have to sit with the scripts and decide where your heart is.

If you have a movie coming out, and people are talking about you, the amount of scripts will build.

It's my deepest interest as an actor: I love discovering how human beings work, how their flaws reveal themselves - how to learn and grow from that - and how characters teach me things as a woman and as a parent.

When you become a parent, you really care that you get that right, and you care about nothing else.

Growth doesn't hurt. This is what I've learned. In the end, it doesn't hurt. It hurts while it's happening. But in the end, you know, for life, for parenting, and for the arts, it's not a bad - not a bad thing to try for.

Going to the Academy Awards is something I remember since I was six, when I went with my mom for the first time, 14 with my dad, you know, and there I am, at 22, 23, whatever I was, sitting next to my mom. You know, and then again, there with my dad. Like, there's a beauty to it, and I care deeply about film history.

My dad was always interested in characters he didn't understand - he was such a great bad guy in movies. And that is really the thing that calls me to the material often: something I struggle to understand in human behaviour.

For me, the key is years of the blessed filmmakers I've worked with giving me permission to be bold and jump off cliffs and to be boundaryless. I would put David Lynch at the top of that list.

It's really fun to act like a bimbo. But it's fun to act like a bimbo only when people know that you really aren't one.

I'm a natural blonde. I was a towhead as a kid, and then it got ashier when I was 18.

Sometimes my family got me in the door. Somebody would say, 'Bruce Dern's daughter - sure I'd like to meet her.' It was a point of interest. But after five minutes of talking about my father, I still had to read for the part.

It's lovely to be considered pretty and lovely to do photo shoots, and I just love fashion. But I'm proud that I did the characters I wanted to do.

I got picked for very unique and independent filmmaking experiences with auteurs. And I'm so lucky.

In American culture we are supposed to take a pill when we're depressed or in grief as opposed to actually feeling.

At 12, turned 13, made a movie with Sex Pistols and The Clash. Learned about a lot of things I never knew and hope will never know again. Don't know how my parents let me do that.

There are a lot more female writers wanting to direct their own material and hopefully will be given the opportunity.

I'm not averse to being a supporting character. I try to pick parts where I can add something.

What I consider a good part for a woman and what some other Hollywood people think are good women's parts are very different. I don't want to play the supportive girlfriend who has nine scenes and just loves that man, maybe cheats on him in one scene but will always be there, and I mean - give me a break.

I'm lucky enough that directors sometimes seek me out for little projects that people don't even know about, that just surface later on.

Like anything else, acting can become boring - a chore, really - if there isn't any challenge. And I like taking challenges. Just when people think they have me figured out, I like to surprise them.

Every role is a new form of surrender.

There's always a side of a woman that likes a man from the other side of the tracks

When man decides he can control nature, he's in deep trouble