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Would you just strap some toe shoes on and dance 'Swan Lake?' No. Would you just put a violin in your hand and - ? No. I felt that way about acting, and I was taught to feel that way. I didn't come to it on my own.
Ellen Barkin
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Ellen Barkin
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 16
Actress
Film Actor
Film Producer
Stage Actor
Television Actor
The Bronx
New York City
Ellen Rona Barkin
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Acting
Violin
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Didn
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More quotes by Ellen Barkin
There is a certain androgyny to my appeal.
Ellen Barkin
I remember my first friend who got sick. It was 1981, and the disease was called the gay cancer. I don't think the word 'AIDS' came out until '84. I just remember it being terrifying as more people got sick. We didn't know how you could catch it, you heard all kinds of crazy things.
Ellen Barkin
I'm Method trained. How is this character like me? What does she think of her mother? What does her mother think of her? It's like construction, and then, yes, you hope you're talented and that the universe aligns and captures the kind of laborer's work you've done and whatever else sprinkles down on you, and it's all caught on film or onstage.
Ellen Barkin
There's no slow build anymore where you get a little part, then you get a little better part, then a better part, until one day your agent calls you us and says, 'guess what, you're a movie star,' and you say, 'Thank you!'
Ellen Barkin
I just would never go audition, and yet I was in very visible places where people would come looking for actors. I say I'm lazy, though I'm sure if I were in therapy for a lot of years, it would turn out to be a lot more than laziness. After awhile, it was, like, too embarrassing for me not to go on auditions. I had to be humiliated into it.
Ellen Barkin
I guess if you're lucky enough not to have to pay your rent, then you or I take much more seriously the kind of work that I do, what it takes for me to leave two teenagers of my own and six stepchildren and a husband and four grandchildren.
Ellen Barkin
Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.
Ellen Barkin
My first movie was 'Diner.' My second movie was 'Tender Mercies.' I did really good work.
Ellen Barkin
My husband thinks he's compromising if we have one cook instead of three.
Ellen Barkin
It is clear I was never the Pretty Girl. I had my two front teeth knocked out when I was 10 and didn't fix them until I was 19. I have a crooked smile and a nose that looks like it's been broken 12 times but never has been. My nose was always red, so people called me Rudolph. My whole face is off-center.
Ellen Barkin
I studied acting for 10 years before I went for an audition. I studied with Lee Strasberg and Actors Studio teachers, and went to the High School of Performing Arts.
Ellen Barkin
I have skinny genes. My mother weighs 90 pounds.
Ellen Barkin
The way Hollywood portrays mothers - you're either all good and saint-like, or you're all bad. And I think the real honesty of motherhood is not given a voice in movies. I miss that as an audience member.
Ellen Barkin
I'm a little more extreme than a homebody. Unless there's some event I really have to go to, I don't like to leave my house.
Ellen Barkin
I have no problem being 53. Why would I want to be 35 again? I want to discover who I am in my 50s. And if I tried too hard to look younger, it would seem that I was uncomfortable with who I am, wouldn't it?
Ellen Barkin
When I played Leonardo DiCaprio's mother, they liked that Leo had very hooded eyes and a rounded nose with a ball. They said, They look like they could be mother and son.
Ellen Barkin
The more powerful you become, some people especially don't like it that you're a woman. I stick up for myself.
Ellen Barkin
I am to a fault an introspective person. But I am not a reflective person - except for a big mistake, and then I really think about it.
Ellen Barkin
I'd never say I'll never have a facelift, but I'm way too scared of looking like a different person. I have no philosophical or political position on plastic surgery I just don't want to look crazy. And I don't like not being able to tell how old someone is: It's creepy.
Ellen Barkin
I'm just curious, who's more fit to raise a child? A loving committed same-sex couple or an unmarried 15-year-old with no income and really no skills to parent?
Ellen Barkin
