Ellen Barkin Quotes

• I’m tenacious, I think – I know – and I do also have a quality where if you tell me I can’t do something, if I know I can’t do it I’m the first to raise my hand and say, ‘I can’t do that.’ But there is a big Bronx, New York Jew in me that just says, ‘Really? Really? You think I – yes, I can. I can do it. I can do it.’

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• I’m not limited by my gender, and I don’t think anyone else should be either. Because I am the age I am and I sort of rode the crest of the first profound post-suffragette feminists, I wasn’t fighting to burn my bra. Those women fought that fight just seconds before I came into womanhood.

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• 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.

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• 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?

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• 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.

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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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• I would love to do a television show in New York City.

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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 was trained by Method acting teachers and we were taught that aside from whatever gift you may or may not have or the level of that gift, that you were obliged to know how to build a table. It’s a craft. It’s like being a ballerina or a violinist.

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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.

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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 like being married. I like taking care of people, having someone to make dinner for.

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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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• I have skinny genes. My mother weighs 90 pounds.

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• 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?

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• I have huge hands and feet. I’m 5’6″ and wear a size 10 shoe.

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• I guess I worry about weird existential things, like how do we spend our final act. This is a very emotional question. I can’t answer it without crying. I think, You’re 56 years old, what did you do? You raised two good kids. What am I going to do now that is as meaningful as that? I don’t know the answer yet.

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• I eat cheese and salami and a lot of fried chicken. I eat a big bag of oatmeal-raisin cookies every night and I don’t gain weight. I still look OK as long as I’m dressed.

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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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Ellen Barkin (29)

Birth:	16th April, 1954
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Actress

About

Ellen Rona Barkin was born in The Bronx, New York, USA. She is an American actress, known for her roles in the films Buckaroo Banzai, The Big Easy, Sea of Love and Switch. She won an Emmy Award in 1997, for Before Women Had Wings and a Tony Award in 2011, for The Normal Heart. She received her high school diploma at Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts. She then attended Hunter College and double majored in history and drama. Her break-out role was in the comedy-drama film Diner in 1982. She currently plays the character of Dani Kirschenbloom, in the Showtime series Happyish.

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