Laurie Metcalf Quotes

When one thing ends, you put it away and start from scratch on the next thing.

- Laurie Metcalf

No matter how many times you've done it, the early stages of getting a show up on its feet is very hit and miss. There seem to be thousands of options on every page to discover.

- Laurie Metcalf

One of the hardest things about directing is just to be patient and remind yourself that you've been in Week 1 of a rehearsal process yourself, and you know what it feels like.

- Laurie Metcalf

I don't like working in front of a camera.

- Laurie Metcalf

I'm not trying to blow out a camera lens or make the audience's hair go straight back from my sheer volume, sheer energy level.

- Laurie Metcalf

I don't like the camera. I get very self-conscious with it and then spend way too much time not looking self-conscious instead of being free, as I do on stage, to do my work.

- Laurie Metcalf

I had accidentally gotten a laugh on a line in a play I was in during high school. I got hooked, but I had no idea I would ever be able to support myself by acting. I knew no one in the business. I was from the Midwest. No one within a radius of a thousand miles was doing anything like that.

- Laurie Metcalf

When I get a beautifully written piece of material, I immediately start imagining how I would interpret it. I love just daydreaming about it for months, breaking it down, seeing where I can spin something. How I can turn this into the most fun ride for the audience that I can make it? That's my job.

- Laurie Metcalf

I want to be thinking as quickly as I need to as soon as I hit the stage. I want to have a vocal warm-up.

- Laurie Metcalf

I watch episodes of 'Rosanne' now where I don't even know what the ending's going to be.

- Laurie Metcalf

I was horribly shy all through grade school and high school. But somehow I got up the nerve to audition for one play in high school - 'Auntie Mame.' I got a small part as the fiancee who comes on in the end. I got laughs. I wasn't shy at all doing the part. I can do anything on stage and write it off as a character.

- Laurie Metcalf

I can't even call it work. I'm a creative-a-holic. I love the tearing into new material.

- Laurie Metcalf

Onstage I'm the one in control - I'm not at the mercy of how an editor chooses to put the scene together later. I can do things onstage that I would never do in real life. It's very freeing.

- Laurie Metcalf

I'm so thrilled to be here on the set of 'Supergirl!'

- Laurie Metcalf

I work just as hard and have just as much fun whether in a 50-seat house or in a 1000-seat house. It's a luxury to be in a tiny space every once in a while and a rush to be on a giant stage every once in a while.

- Laurie Metcalf

Really, I'll go anywhere at any time to continue working in theater - it's a passion that I'm thankful I still have. It keeps me creative and on my toes and meeting great people. I can't imagine a better way of working than on a play.

- Laurie Metcalf

'Three Tall Women' is kind of fascinating. I had never seen it itself, and I imagine the audience will find it very intriguing to watch the reveal of who these people are and how they interact in the second act.

- Laurie Metcalf

I wasn't turning down film roles, let's put it that way. I was never really on that radar.

- Laurie Metcalf

Theater opened up a whole new world for me. It was a freedom I'd never known before.

- Laurie Metcalf

You know, if a TV show dropped into my lap out of the blue, I would have a hard time turning it down because there just isn't the money in theater that there is on TV.

- Laurie Metcalf

That was the beauty of 'Roseanne' and Roseanne herself. It could go dark; it could do issues.

- Laurie Metcalf

I watch the Oscars in my pajamas like everybody else.

- Laurie Metcalf

I was always a secretary in the early days, before we decided we were brave enough to join Equity and see if this thing has any legs.

- Laurie Metcalf

I'm hideously shy as myself, but on stage I can run around naked and bite the heads off fish.

- Laurie Metcalf

My profession is about as far away from growing up in southern Illinois as you can get.

- Laurie Metcalf

I tend to root for characters who have a lot of negative qualities, but what's driving them forward is their passion. They're on a mission, and maybe their approach is misguided, but you can't fault them for giving 150%.

- Laurie Metcalf

I like contemporary, bare-boned writing. I don't like having the language that I barely understand get in the way of me interpreting it over to an audience. It's this barrier that I don't want to have to attack.

- Laurie Metcalf

I like to play a wide range of characters. The more they're unlike me, the better I like it.

- Laurie Metcalf

I don't know if ISU helped me become what I am, but I know that if I hadn't gone there, I wouldn't be what I am today.

- Laurie Metcalf

I've loved every minute of every hour I've spent doing theatre.

- Laurie Metcalf

I'm incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to bring Mae to work with me as I take on the guest role of 'Mary McGowan.'

- Laurie Metcalf

I almost never give interviews. It's not because I want to play hard to get. It's just that I never seem to have anything interesting to say.

- Laurie Metcalf

I gravitated back to theatre again, and when I heard about this little independent movie called 'Lady Bird,' I thought, 'This will be a project where I can dip my toe back into the water.'

- Laurie Metcalf

I am a kind of competitive person. I am competitive with myself. I won't let anything go until I am satisfied with how it is.

- Laurie Metcalf

I've been directed by other actors, and being an actor doesn't make you a good director.

- Laurie Metcalf

I'm happy whenever I'm in a rehearsal room. I've always gotten all my energy and creativity in there.

- Laurie Metcalf

I was an office secretary for a long time. A good secretary.

- Laurie Metcalf

I was too practical to major in theater. Acting - what was I going to do with acting? There was no future in it.

- Laurie Metcalf

A dream job is to walk right past hair and makeup.

- Laurie Metcalf

Every part I get, I just think I'm so lucky. They're so hard to get, you know.

- Laurie Metcalf