47 Quotes by Joan Allen

I'm hard to pin down. I tend to look different in films.

Once I got to high school and auditioned for a play and got in, I thought this was really what I was looking for. Once that had got cleared up, from 13 on, that was it.

Acting gave me the opportunity to do outrageous things. It allowed me to be sad, happy, angry and lustful even if it was just vicariously.

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.

I think plays deserve other interpretations. They should live on, and other people should should take their hand at them. I'm very supportive of that.

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.

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.

Acting gave me the opportunity to do outrageous things. It allowed me to be sad, happy, angry and lustful, even if it was just vicariously.

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.