Sarah Polley Quotes
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I'm never sure what's coming next, but I'm an open minded person and I welcome any challenge.
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I think that I get different kinds of joy out of directing a film and acting, and it's sort of necessary to just be doing one and focusing on that. I'm in awe of anyone who tries to be an actor-director, so I couldn't really see that.
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I just feel like it's so amazing every few years when I'm not making a film to act and basically go back to film school and just watch other filmmakers work and try to be a part of somebody else's vision. So I feel like you do use two very different parts of your brain, and it's great to be able to jump back and forth.
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Acting is something that I've done since I was so young. I always felt - certainly as a teenager - really cynical about acting. I definitely didn't feel like it was something I wanted to do, and so I really took it for granted.
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I want my world to get bigger and not end up in a small corner.
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The ways in which people are damaged are the ways in which they're strong. It's what makes people interesting - what they've overcome and how, and what they haven't and how that's become a good thing. Almost everyone's life is both a gorgeous story and a tragedy. I think being alive is really, really hard, and I'm constantly stunned and amazed by people who make it interesting and beautiful.
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Some of the funniest moments I've ever experienced have been in the midst of tragic situations in my life.
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So I decided to make a film about our need to tell stories, to own our stories, to understand them, and to have them heard.
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All of my short films are about marriages, and I think that this probably comes from some kind of unconscious fascination with my parents' story and what they went through.
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I think that cynicism can often be mistaken for wisdom.
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I think that we need to get along together if we want to survive in the twenty-first century.
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Lately I did a film called All I Want for Christmas and it was well received. This gave me a new point of view and a new respect for my work as an actress.
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The only disadvantage to directing if you've been an actor is how self-conscious you are. When I'm directing, I'm always so aware when I'm speaking to an actor of how easily I could throw them off by saying something careless or not being clear or concise. So it does make you watch your words in a way that sometimes is unhelpful.
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I've always been such a fan of short films - in fact, I never considered that I would actually make a feature. I just thought I wanted to make shorts for the rest of my life. They are a lot harder to have shown and a lot harder to find and see as an audience, but I don't know. It's just a form that I really love. I was just making them for the process, but ultimately, I did get them into festivals, and they did end up on television, and they had as much of a life as short films can.
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I think that the idea of family is a very powerful and influential and disjointed thing that will always captivate me.
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I feel like I've always had two selves - the part of me that makes films and the part of me that's political, and they haven't really connected that much. Alias Grace talks about things like class and immigration and women's rights, which felt really good. But especially now, there are pressing things to be said. It's a really scary time in the world. It's a very scary thing to have an American president who openly brags about assaulting women and is openly racist. This isn't a moment to be speaking in metaphors.
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I think it's a universal thing in every family, that people have their own specific versions of pivotal events or even small memories.
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There is no point trying to figure out who is guilty or not at un-balancing the planet. I think we need to figure out and solve the problems together and not isolate from each other.
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My mom died of cancer when I was really young. I'm not someone who tries to work out their own stuff with a role, but I think that happened despite my best efforts to keep myself separate from it.
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It's not that I don't want to become famous or that I'm obsessed by my work as an actress, but it's all about not limiting myself, such as putting myself in a little jail that I can escape from.
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I was concerned about that, because I've always been so specific about doing independent films, but I've never done anything that's so genuinely and ridiculously fun. And that's a great thing, for me to discover that that's possible.
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I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.
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We're in this space right now where things are very precarious for women and things in the States are so terrifying. There are so many rollbacks of rights women have gained - and it can happen quickly, more quickly than we think. I think it would be good for us to think back and ahead to protect the space we're in.
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Film and TV is a very hard profession to enter into if you don't have the ability to take a long period of time without making money so you can write, direct or raise financing, or work your way up, often with unpaid internships. It's hard to get into without a lot of connections. You end up with a lot of white people from privilege making films. So we're seeing a lot of the same kinds of stories.
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Being a human being is all about experiencing all of the wonders of the world and therefore as an actress, I'm open to any opportunity that may enrich my horizon.
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I'm a control freak and I like to be overprepared, and I'm overly organized and I'm not in the moment a lot of the time.
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I've always known that I've wanted to write, but I always saw myself doing that in the context of something other than film, so it was a really beautiful and kind of perfect moment in my life when I realized that I could combine this idea of wanting to write and tell my own stories with the environment I had grown up in and knew well - that I could make film as opposed to writing being a departure from what I knew.
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I enjoy doing my more intimate and less commercial pictures and also I enjoy directing.
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Well, because Dawn of the Dead can take place anywhere and it shows that actually the entire planet is contaminated, I would say that it shows the new face of our world - one person, one race, united against the invisible destructive force.
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It's hard to give up that amount of control. It's scary to make yourself that vulnerable. Because you might do all kinds of things that are unplanned or are unexpected that maybe don't work, and you have to trust the director to see that and work around those things. I find it really scary.
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