Melissa Leo quotes:

I mean, the unfair treatment of women and black people and Indians and other groups, that's real. Mistreatment of other people because 'I'm better than you are' is such a sad part of the world.

I was really not familiar at all with Edward Snowden. I like to get that right out of the way and really learned most of what I know from Oliver's [Stones] script.

Ever since Marilyn Monroe was transformed from one of the prettiest girls you could ever hope to see into an icon, everyone has been trying to repeat that icon. And now the entire industry is filled with, and by and large run by, wannabes.

There were not enough women like Kay on TV and now there are none.

I have some close friends I keep in touch with. I knit. I watch a little too much TV. I ski, if the weather's right for that. If I can find a group of buddies, I go rock climbing.

Well, I don't think of myself as a feminist at all. As soon as we start labeling and categorizing ourselves and others, that's going to shut down the world.

An actor has to be very, very careful, as one of the most wonderful props - and actors love props - is a cigarette. There's so much to do with it: you can bring it up to your face, play with the smoke. It's just the greatest - ever since I was 16 and in acting school in England, I've been playing around with cigarettes.

To play someone when the character masks their own emotions, doesn't understand their own emotions, has no release for their own emotions, and yet is full of emotion - that is a much harder character to play than someone who has somewhere to put it.

It's not exactly an interview that's going on [in documentary]. I guess we do ask Edward Snowden some questions and we're recording him answering them and so on like that.

To get the hippie out of certain characters is probably the most difficult thing for me. I was not a hippie by choice but by birth.

Supporting actors are the support. You can't make a building without support. You can't buy dinner without support.

Being an actor on a movie set is like going to the playground at recess.

You know, when I got started on television in the '80s, you would go to the costume department, and if you were a female they put you into a skirt. And you had a pocketbook, usually a shoulder bag.

I think the funny thing about acting for me - and I hold it in a very holy, spiritual way - not to be overly fundamentalist about it, but it's that important to me - is that it is an ancient healing art.

That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it.

Acting is the business of truth, so that we can see ourselves reflected back and learn.

I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke.

I haven't had a lot of experience with glamour. I've never had to mask myself, as many now not-so-young actresses have had to do. Female actors in that regard have a different lot in life than male actors.

People often expect me to be something other than what I am.

The director is the captain of the ship, without question. No matter what their talent or energy level is, everyone on the crew has all eyes on the captain. If they come in going, "I don't know. Maybe we'll do this. Maybe we'll do that," you've got 10 days to shoot and they don't care what you're doing.

I do, however, have tape over my eyepiece as well. What I think my peace is saying isn't, "Oh I have something to hide. I don't want you to look.", it's more saying, "No thank you. I prefer you not look. I'm not giving you permission.

I don't tend to use technology all that much. Of course, I can't avoid it - it's called the telephone nowadays. And I do a certain amount of email, work-related primarily, on it. But I don't do a lot of looking for things online.

I love acting. I really do. I think that's maybe the one thing that is known about me.

I think this notion of acting and glamour is getting in everybody's way.

I'm going to show you I haven't given you permission because clearly you're not grown up enough to understand that, not having given you permission, you can't just come look in my house." And I won't know if they're coming and looking or not...so I put a piece of tape over it.

The climate informs the character.

The key to acting has much more to do with listening than with talking.

The power of television - it's so present in our lives, we don't even know how powerful it is.

You have this certain about of responsibility to play a fictitious character and you have a script that's guiding you and the other information of the custom department's choices, and the set department, "Where are you", and all those other pieces of information but you have to cull from your imagination the answer to all the unasked questions. And with a real person, there's someone to get that information from, perhaps.