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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

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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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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.
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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.
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Gabriel Byrne is an extraordinary human being. We have two extraordinary kids and we work at it. We were always friends. He stuck by me through very hard times, and I hope he'd say the same about me.
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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.
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A successful marriage isn't necessarily one that lasts until you're dead.
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I don’t want to be a mentor in my bedroom.
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It's no stretch to picture me standing next to Al Pacino or Robert De Niro. Those are ethnic New York men. I'm an ethnic New York girl. Everybody has their limitations. I mean, I should never be cast as Queen Elizabeth.
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My husband thinks he's compromising if we have one cook instead of three.
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My nickname was Skinabo - skin and bones.
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The more powerful you become, some people especially don't like it that you're a woman. I stick up for myself.
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I wish I had a little more ambition. But then what would I do? Turn down more roles with more vehemence? Me no likey worky.
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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.
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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!'
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You've got a movie where the pro-choice family gives their daughter no choice. The pro-life family murders. What seems to be the good mother, the kind of hippie painter, sweet and cute mother has no love for her daughter really.
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I like being married. I like taking care of people, having someone to make dinner for.
Ellen Barkin
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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.
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There is a certain androgyny to my appeal.
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My first movie was 'Diner.' My second movie was 'Tender Mercies.' I did really good work.
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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.
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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