Maria Bello quotes:

I was always anti-marriage. I didn't understand monogamy. I couldn't figure out how that could last. And then I met Bryn and I started to understand the beauty of constancy and history and change and going on the roller coaster with someone - of having a partner in life.

When you fall head over heels for someone, you're not falling in love with who they are as a person; you're falling in love with your idea of love.

So many actors wear wigs nowadays. Besides, if someone is hiring me because of how I wear my hair, I don't want to work with them anyway.

When I had my son, it was the worst day and the best day of my life because I realized that I will never love someone so much, but I will never be able to keep him from the lessons that he's meant to learn, in this lifetime.

When I do Pilates, or when I do work out, I feel better all day. Yet I still struggle to keep it on my schedule.

I want to do more action adventures and more romantic comedies.

I'm a girl who loves fashion. I'm such a Cinderella - I love to put on a great dress and heels. It's fun!

I'm not afraid to play my age. I never was. I've never been an ingenue. I like getting older.

I think a lot of people become actors because they have a great reservoir and repertoire of many different emotions they felt over their lives. It's like having a toolbox, and you go down into the toolbox and choose one or two of those that you need for a particular scenario, or something that comes up in a line.

I don't think you understand what levels or what fears until you have a child of your own. I mean, I've never loved someone so much and I've never been so afraid in my life. And the truth is I would kill someone, whoever tried to hurt him. I would. I have no doubt about it.

My biggest dream since I was a kid was to be the woman sneaking on the pirate ship dressed like a man, who was this great sword fighter, and the captain fell in love with her.

Acting and emotionally expressing myself, seeing the world and being a mom are just all very exciting to me. I'm a real curious person.

People tend to think when you're on dramatic films, that it's all so heavy, but it's really not when you're working with great actors.

I was really conflicted. I had always planned to help the world. Instead, I was going to become an actress? That seemed like such a selfish thing to do.

You serve the best by doing what you love the most.

I just have a gut feeling about something, if I really want to do it, if I'm excited about it, if I want to explore it. And that goes across all different sorts of genres.

I don't really have a method or a technical process. I studied [Sanford] Meisner, and that's the thing that really works for me. That sort of instinctual, in the moment, what the other actors do, working off them and letting the story unfold, as opposed to having an idea of what the story should be.

I feel like, in a way, after doing it for so many years, you learn a certain concentration and how to turn it on and off.

I just want to use all of myself, for the rest of my life, in every facet of my life, as long as I live.

I never liked the whole idea of [creating your own] background, if it's not pertinent, where the character lived as a child, and who I was and how I was. That never helped me in any way, so I don't even do that.

I'm interested in people who have lived, who are searching and questioning.

It's not like I prepare anymore, or have to think about my son being dead to get emotional. If you're working with a good actor and you're reacting off of them and you have a good script, it just comes organically. It's just stored in your body. So that emotion will just be brought out of you, as opposed to trying to force it.

Life goes so fast, and there is so much to do. But the moments that have enriched my life the most came when I slowed down and connected with the people I care about.

My mother told me when I was a kid that each time we get to what feels like the edge of a cliff, we have two choices: to turn around and run, or to jump. I have learned over time to jump - and though it is scary, I know somewhere inside me that I will be caught.

People are kinda still a bit puritanical, perhaps. People don't expect a woman to feel so open, in a way, about her sexuality onscreen, and they probably find it fascinating. I think more actors are doing it and being open to that and not being afraid of it, so it's becoming less of a thing.

There is always one person on the set who has a lot of anxiety, an actor who is really intense and has to stay in character and holds himself away from the rest of us.

There's usually not a lot of rehearsal when you do films.

You can be feminine and strong, at the same time. You can be a bad-ass and, at the same time, have a vulnerableness when you're hysterically crying, like most of us girls.