Quotes from Jennifer Jason Leigh

I like a movie that the audience actively has to participate in, and not just casually observe. Whatever my part in it, just as an audience member, I find that exciting.

I like a movie that the audience actively has to participate in and not just casually observe.

I hate parties. I don't like big crowded things.

I really go against drama in my life. Life is too short.

Not to compare an actor to a painter, but you can go through different phases and still be the same artist, y'know?

My mother always helped me because she was kind of a research fanatic. When she would write a screenplay, there would be so much research all over the walls. And so when I started working as an actress, I would do the same thing. She instilled in me a love of taking everything very seriously. It didn't matter what it was.

I'm a fraidy cat. I play everything very safe in my life, so I think that's why I like characters that don't.

Being a good girl means suppressing a lot.

Susie Waggoner in 'Miami Blues' is just such a sweetheart, such an innocent. When I watch that, I really feel like I'm watching Susie Waggoner. I don't really see myself. And there's a simplicity to it that I really like.

I'm not great at judging a career. Or planning one.

I remember I once went to a nutritionist who said I come from good Russian-Jewish peasant stock, which means I can hold a potato in my body for a week, if need be.

I used to hang out by the food table at parties because you don't have to talk to anybody. If you do then you can talk about the food.

I think I am talented - but I also think I'm very lucky.

I'm a typical middle child. I'm the mediator. The one that makes everything OK, puts their own needs aside to make sure everybody's happy. It's hard to change your nature, even with years and years of therapy.

I used to hang out by the food table at parties because you don't have to talk to anybody. If you do then you can talk about the food.

I'd love to have children, and I think marriage is great, I really do.

I think that's an incredible thing that we can do as actors - to feel empathy toward someone that you may otherwise detest, you know?

Writing, producing and directing, I must say, is incredibly satisfying and gratifying. I've never been happier.

Writing, producing and directing, I must say, is incredibly satisfying and gratifying.

I've never really been a careerist; I've never been able to step back and look at anything in that way. I though this is just what happens. I did take my work very seriously. I loved immersing myself in a character. I loved getting the opportunity to do that. I didn't realize how extraordinary it was, how lucky I was, because I was young.

I just don't want to talk about my personal life. I feel like it's mine, I'm not trying to promote it. It's nice to have things that are your own, that you value enough that you don't have to use to sell a movie.

I feel like I had a great career in a way. Maybe not the most successful monetarily or in other ways, but creatively, I feel incredibly fortunate.

I'm so different to the roles I play, and perhaps that's why they are appealing to me as an actor. But I would never want to inhabit my characters' shoes in real life.

My mom's a screenwriter, and before that, she was an actress, and my father was an actor; my stepfather was a director, so I was on sets a lot as a kid. I loved the magic of the set. You walk in, and it's a living room, and you walk outside, and it's just a piece of wood held up by another piece of wood.