Patricia Clarkson

But I have had the luxury of working on good films with great people.

I love writers. All of my best friends are writers.

If my gravy train stops at SAG, honey, it's been a great ride.

But no, had I been successful in my 20s I would have been just fine. But it is nice to defy the odds.

I'll read a script maybe twice, but I'll think about the role more than I'll rehearse lines.

The odds are not in your favor the older you get, especially if you're a woman in this business.

And I have a really great agent and I know it's almost an oxymoron to say you have a smart agent. But she is and she has a beautiful aesthetic and she has guided me.

I'm still traumatized that I'm going to be on a big screen in a white bikini and naked so who knows!

It's never easy with characters in these dark and grave circumstances but that's my job.

I don't like a lot of rehearsing.

New Orleans. Born and raised. I lived there until I was 19.

I'm obsessed. I've always needed to know what's going on but now it's a must.

And now oddly I'm getting sexier parts than I've ever gotten.

Holly Hunter has been doing great work forever.

Well did graduate summa cum laude from Fordham University.

See, the SAG awards caught me totally by surprise.

You're always close and you never get that big romantic lead.

I think it kind of took being a character actor to kind of now enter into leading ladies.

The majority of work I do is in independent films, where you're lucky if you have five takes.

I'm really a director's actor. I rely heavily on a director.

I think it would be hard to go the distance in this business without a sense of humor.

I always try to approach character first and foremost viscerally.

I think it's always harder in a film to convey intimacy.

Why are comedic parts for women the exception, not the rule?

I just have a thing for writers. Maybe it because I'm just so not a writer.

I have to watch the news or my day is not complete.