Quotes from Rooney Mara

I always wanted to be an actor, but I was always fighting it. It never seemed that honorable to me, and I guess I was always afraid that I might fail.

It never seemed that honorable to me, and I guess I was always afraid that I might fail.

I wouldnt call acting a job - its a pleasure. I love getting to play different characters, getting to play dress up, and getting paid for it.

I am one of 40 grandchildren. What bothers me about the whole trust-fund thing is that it sort of presumes that everything is handed to you. And if there is one thing about my family that I do identify with, it is that everyone is extremely hardworking.

What bothers me about the whole trust-fund thing is that it sort of presumes that everything is handed to you. And if there is one thing about my family that I do identify with, it is that everyone is extremely hardworking.

As an actor, you can't just be in the film. You're also in charge of selling it, and so you have to sell yourself, and you have to be very political and make sure to not say the wrong things. It's exhausting.

It's really hard coming of age in today's society, where society wants you to make the decision of what you want to do with your life by the time you're 16 years old. Most kids don't know what they want to do. How could they? They haven't lived in the real world yet.

I don't find myself intriguing.

I've done jobs where I thought, 'I don't want to be that kind of actor; I don't want to work on something with people who don't have the same kind of goal as I do.'

On 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,' I spent two or three months learning how to ride a motorcycle. I wasn't really riding the motorcycle in 98 percent of the movie, but the shots of me getting on and off had to look like I had been doing it for years and years.

One of the things that make our version that much more heartbreaking is that even though I am playing a 24-year-old I look much younger. I look like a child.

I've been trying to really live in the moment because I will never get this part of it back. As soon as the movie comes out, everyone will turn it into what they believe it is, so I've really been trying to appreciate every minute of now. Because I know what's coming.

My sister started acting professionally when she was twelve, but I wanted to go to college first.

I'm probably more insane than most people and less than a lot of others. I'm somewhere in the middle.

I pick up energy really easily. Even if I go to the grocery store, and no one is paying attention to me, I can pick up other people's moods, and it's really intense.

I like being alone. I need a lot of alone time as a human. And especially on a movie set when you're around people all day long.

The more people know about you, the less they can project who you are supposed to be. It's unfortunate that you really only get one shot at that.

When I was at college, my nickname was Keds because I wore Keds. I guess it wasn't really a nickname, because nicknames are usually given to you by people who are your friends and who know you. But I didn't know the people who called me Keds. I think that they didn't like me because I didn't want to join a sorority.

There's a certain way people are used to seeing nude women, and that's in a submissive, coy pose, not looking at the camera. And in this poster, I'm looking dead into the camera with no expression on my face. I think it freaks a lot of people out.

How do we get to equality? I don't think it comes from fear. I think it comes from understanding.

I've made some really good friends from movies, but a lot of the time it's a very isolated experience that lives and dies during the production.

There's only so many movies you can do. I start to get really self-loathing and sick of myself. And I think in order to act, you need to live a little bit to fill yourself with experience.

When you're an actor on set, people treat you like a giant baby. They don't let you do anything. Like, "Do you need any food? Do you need the bathroom?"

I'm not at all funny. I can do dark comedy pretty well, but straight-up comedy, I don't know. I'm much darker. I've been like that since I was 3 years old