Emily Mortimer quotes:

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  • Los Angeles is like a beauty parlor at the end of the universe.

  • I'm always sort of anticipating life being difficult, but on a basic level, that's sort of on the surface, on a basic level, I'm optimistic in the sense that I think it's all going to be alright in the end.

  • It is brilliant going to the theatre and being forced to sit and listen and think about life. It can be almost a near-religious experience.

  • I had friends at school, but I was never part of a gang and I dreamed of that sense of belonging to a group. You know, where people would call me 'Em' and shout across the bar, 'Em, what are you drinking?' after the show.

  • I'm trying to avoid, you know, guilt, even though before the child is born, you're already thinking you're doing things wrong... Why do I think that will probably carry over until the day you die?

  • I wake up early. At 6:30 A.M., I'm at my most optimistic.

  • I had watched Alfie, but I didn't consider it a prerequisite. Michael Caine was just extremely fabulous. He's one of the most professional actors I've ever worked with. I guess after a lifetime of doing it, you know what you're doing. He's incredibly uncomplaining, undemanding.

  • I did my homework and didn't go out much, and had a very highly developed kitsch fantasy life where I dreamed of being a dancing girl.

  • It's dangerous talking about yourself too much because you find yourself talking in sound bites.

  • I want any excuse to come home. My dad is not a spring chicken any more. If anyone says, 'Go buy a postage stamp in London,' I'll go and do it.

  • So far I haven't really been prominent enough to get critical attention focused on me. So, of course, I fully expect bad reviews, but I will be wracked with misery as a result.

  • I was terribly shy when I was growing up, I really wasn't confident with other people and I think I was always afraid of up or not being this very cool, amazing person that I wanted to be.

  • I'm still shy - I'm no good at my children's parent-teacher conferences, and I'm slowly learning how to ask for what I want. But I now know that I have a reserve of courage to draw upon when I really need it. There's nothing that I'm too scared to have a go at.

  • Lots of people there seemed to be in denial, in absolute denial, of death - everybody's pretending that death doesn't happen in L.A.; if you do enough exercise and take enough wheatgrass and have your pill every day, you might not die.

  • In my first few years as an actor, I took one terrible TV job after another. But even as I laughed off my awful roles and made fun of myself to friends, my work made me cringe - I dreaded anyone's seeing it. I was crushed that I wasn't doing anything I was proud of.

  • I was determined not to become an American citizen but I did it for completely cynical reasons: to avoid paying inheritance tax in the U.S.

  • Some people come alive at night. I'm hopeless by 9 p.m. Coffee and Cadbury buy me an extra half hour. Often I can't get my clothes off I'm so far gone.

  • You are exposing yourself all the time as an actor. There's the risk of being thought of as bad or boring or unattractive.

  • Doing press is like eating at McDonald's: while it's going on it's vaguely enjoyable - you're seduced by your own vanity and taking yourself rather seriously - but immediately afterwards you feel sick.

  • I never felt I was quite the ticket academically. I always felt I had to put in an enormous amount of effort not to be disappointing. So I worked really hard, but at the time it suited me, because I didn't do very much else.

  • I must have been a really pretentious little girl.

  • I am a good mother and I feel proud about it.

  • But I have to grow out of it, because it's very boring, really. Even when you're telling people how crap you are, you're still banging on about yourself.

  • I decided to give acting a serious, committed try, and soon after, I read the script for 'Lovely and Amazing.' The story was beautiful and honest, and the characters struggled with the same insecurities many women - including me - face. I didn't think I had a chance in hell of being in the film, but I knew I had to go for it.

  • 51st State was one that I loved doing because the character was so out there, and in a way I was sad to leave the character behind. I'm afraid I could never be that cool in real life!

  • I like to mix it up, yeah. I don't sort of think, 'Oh, I need to do a comedy, I've done three dramas this year.' I don't think of it like that, but I definitely from project to project I feel like I want to just do something different all of the time and stop, I don't want to bore myself or anyone else.

  • There were moments where I was being kicked in the stomach, and even though I had this brace on to protect me, I still had to prepare myself for it . You can't be relaxed when that's happening. You have to brace your muscles. I can remember thinking as it was about to happen "Wasn't that how Houdini died?" I think it was.

  • I already feel a bit annoyed at myself for writing screenplays. It's a bit, I don't know, model-singer-dancer-actress that went to a posh school. There's something too weirdly predictable about it.

  • To get art nowadays, in cinema or books or anything, that grapples with the possibility of a meaningless universe... it just doesn't happen any more. In even the most indie of the indie films, everything has to come to some kind of neat conclusion.

  • I've only half-admitted I'm a professional. I know I am, I've paid my dues, but one of the things I could do better when I'm acting is to really be rigorous and to think I know how to do it. To use my brain."

  • My dad had this philosophy that if you tell children they're beautiful and wonderful then they believe it, and they will be. So I never thought I was unattractive. But I was never one of the girls at school who had lots of boyfriends.

  • I'm a dual citizen, as are my husband and children. We have got eight passports between us; we're weighed down by them whenever we go anywhere.

  • When I'm panicked about my love handles, I go to the YMCA and get obsessed with Kid Rock videos as I'm on the running machine.

  • The odd thing is if you asked me to do the accent now I would find it very difficult unless I was also playing that part, because I associate it so much with entering into the role and stepping into someone else's shoes.

  • It's a hard thing to do, to be given a script, and know that you've got to turn up on the first day of the shoot - generally without having had any rehearsal - and present a character. It's really baffling; it's incredibly hard to know how to begin, to approach it, other than just thinking about it.

  • I went to dinner with my mother-in-law and I just realized I was talking in sound bites to her and expecting her to laugh every time I said anything or be jotting something down in a notebook. So you have to kind of really have a talk with yourself after you've done a press tour and say, 'Chill out!'

  • I guess secrets are part of the fabric of everybody's lives. I mean everybody's lives, and guilt is part of the fabric of everybody's lives.

  • I've only half-admitted I'm a professional. I know I am, I've paid my dues, but one of the things I could do better when I'm acting is to really be rigorous and to think I know how to do it. To use my brain.

  • Accents are very tangible, blessedly, and if you have to do one, it's a way of getting into character. I can read it through a few times and pretend I know what I'm doing!

  • The thing I miss about L.A. is time. I feel like I had much more time there, partly because no one is ever really doing anything.

  • Every time you start a new job, you're starting from the beginning again and it's terrifying. And you feel like you're going to be fired and told to go home and never to darken the doors of these people ever again.

  • I'm physically completely mal-coordinated. My best friend used to make me run for the bus just to give herself a quick, cheap laugh because I definitely don't have that sophisticated cool thing down.

  • Despite being extremely professional, Michael Caine has a giggle which was lethal for me because once you catch his eyes, once you realize the other person is a giggler too, it's curtains.

  • It's very difficult to find the time or the money for people to organize rehearsals for some movies. It staggers me how little preparation often goes into these scenes which are difficult and complicated. You think, "God, it's crazy. I've never met this person before and here I am having to work at how to do a whole performance on the set." It was great to have a few days of just talking to Michael [Caine]and Daniel [Barber] and thinking about the characters and the relationship between them before we started shooting.

  • You don't have to be brilliant at everything. You just have to have the courage to put yourself in the line of fire.

  • I spent a lot of time with a real detective, a lady detective inspector who was the only female detective inspector in the whole of East London. She and I hung out a lot. She showed me what she did and I spent time with her. So, [she was] a lot of the inspiration for the way I dressed and sometimes the dialogue in those interview scenes where we're cross examining and questioning the youths and trying to get a confession out of them.

  • I'm just happy to be a film where for once I don't have to worry about my hair, because my managers are always complaining about my hair looking depressing in my movies. Which is true. I mean, it's true.

  • I have to say that, though it sounds so superficial, the accent really does help. I like having accents preparing for a part.

  • Breakfast is my favorite meal. I cook a big one for everyone - bacon and eggs. I own a lot of eggcups.

  • 'Leonie' did get made and it was an extremely wonderful experience. I got to travel the world. I filmed for 6 months - 3 months in New Orleans and 3 months in Japan.

  • I want to discover more things about acting.

  • I'm an optimist by nature, myself, I think.

  • I borrowed my friends car the other day in an attempt to persuade my husband that we needed a car and literally this is true, in the first day of borrowing the car, I got three tickets and I rear-ended it.

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