Quotes from Annette Bening

A lot of directors in my experience are very receptive. They see what you do first, and then they want to find a place to put the camera, and they tweak you here and there.

I read 'Game Change.' If you want to relive the campaign, that book is unbelievable. It's great. It's the book of that campaign. It brought all the memories back of everything with Clinton and Obama, and Sarah Palin and McCain, and choosing her, and John Edwards. It was an interesting book.

What really motivates you to try to work things out as an actor is in large part fear, because you want to get into that narrative and bring the audience along.

I've always been pretty levelheaded. In show business, you need to have a certain internal stability.

Our children see us a certain way, and we want to be seen by them in a certain way. I certainly want to be a strong, stable, loving, consistent presence in my children's lives. But we are human beings, too.

It's hard to make a living in this business. Unions aren't as strong as they used to be. For a journeyman actor - someone who doesn't have a famous name but has consistent work in theater or film or TV - it has become harder to get through, harder to raise a family.

I think what's interesting about the whole paparazzi thing is that unless you're Brad Pitt or Madonna, you can pretty much avoid it. You know when you're going to an opening that you will be photographed, so that's fine. And you know the restaurants that have paparazzi, so you don't go to them.

When I watch my kids, and I see the primal level at which the sibling relationships are formed, then I completely understand what these unresolved adult sibling problems are based on. You know, 'Mom liked you better' and, 'You got your own room and I didn't.'

Getting all dressed up and putting on fancy clothes - all of that's a great thing, but oddly, it doesn't really have a lot to do with acting most of the time.

Oh, honey, I'm from Oklahoma! This is who I am - middle-class all the way!

If you can open people's hearts first, then maybe people's minds get opened after that.

Anyone who is drawn in broad strokes either negatively or positively is generally not very interesting to play.

Anybody who has children and children who are well feels a sense of responsibility towards parents and kids and families that are struggling and that aren't well.

Acting is not about being famous, it's about exploring the human soul.

I'm certainly not a perfect mother, but I am an avid mother, let me put it that way.

I just want to be educated.

I still remember the five points of salesmanship: attention, interest, conviction, desire and close.

I've played parts that were just likable people, and there's a certain pleasure in that. And that's that.

I am really looking forward as I get older and older, to being less and less nice.

I feel very, very lucky to have come from the family I did. We have our dysfunctions and our problems, just like any family. But my parents are extremely loving people.

We all get lost along the way, but hopefully we figure out some sort of path. It helps if you can imagine the process as well as the goal. Those kinds of dreams are easier to achieve.