Greta Gerwig Quotes

I feel like I’m an actor that likes to have lots of points of connection.

Working is not instantly rewarding. It’s a long process, and it’s much easier to just feed whatever dopamine cycles exist in your brain in instant gratification ways. I get it; I do it.

The Catholic theatrics are pretty high quality, but the Protestants have better hymns.

I’m all for the banalities of life and humiliation and everyday tragedies, but I also think people have big moments, and they have bigness in them.

I’d applied to graduate school for playwriting, and I got rejected by every school. I felt that theatre was closed but that, when it came to film, the door was very slightly ajar. If I have any virtues, it’s that I’m good at walking through doors that are slightly ajar.

I love movies, so getting to be in the conversation and meet some of my heroes has been so fun. It’s just the most fun thing ever.

As a writer, I think I’m mainly interested in contemporary themes, so when I create my own stuff, it’s inherently that. But as an actor, I would like to do lots of different things. I would love to play someone completely different from myself in a costume drama.

From Rebecca Miller, I took the idea that the director needs to arrive every day an hour ahead of everyone else and walk through the entire day.

I live in New York, and I love New York as well, but I think Los Angeles is a place where if you have the right person with you, there are all these little worlds that you would never guess by just looking at the exterior of what the city is.

I stopped being interested in improvisation, and I continue to not be that interested in it. Comedians can do it on a different level because they have a goal, but if you’re improvising something that’s dramatic, there’s not that much to be good at.

Acting was always the first love, but a lot of people want to be actors, and my goal was, ‘Come hell or high water, I will be a part of this world, however I can.’ So that just led me to throwing myself into every aspect of narrative storytelling I could.

I think it’s true of a lot of teenagers that you’re convinced that life is happening somewhere else.

I wouldn’t call myself ‘into the DJ scene.’ I have friends who are DJs, like James Murphy. I was really into the DJ scene at his wedding. But generally, I’m not at the clubs. I’ve never been to a rave.

I thought movies were handed down by God. I knew that theater was made by people because I saw the people in front of me, but movies seemed like they were delivered, wholly made, from Zeus‘s head or something.

I’ve made so many films in New York. There was an assumption I think a lot of people had that I am a New Yorker, that I am from New York, and I always felt like nothing could be further from the truth.

Getting bad reviews or doing something that’s not great is also really good for you as an actor. It also makes me feel as an actor that I’ve earned my stripes a bit.

Nobody knows what you have in you until you’ve done it, so I just keep pushing those boundaries, and I figure it will all come out in the wash.

I loved ‘Moonlight.’ I thought it was really beautiful. Really great.

We would go down to Riverside, California, which is very poor now, but that’s where my grandfather grew up. He grew up during the Depression in Riverside.

I was serious about ballet for a long time, but my mom got me into tap and jazz and modern and hip-hop, and I was one of those over-lessoned children.

Having health insurance made me feel like a real person. Up until then, it felt like I was getting away with something, and if three things went wrong, it would all fall apart.

Young Harrison Ford, what a dreamboat.

I love movies, but sometimes I think it’s better for actresses not to be total cinephiles. You have to be able to do the work at some point; you can’t be totally starstruck. ‘I can’t believe it’s Woody Allen!’ You have to get past that.

When I was a kid, I used to do my homework in the living room, where there was a picture window. I was hoping that someone would walk by and see me looking very studious in my living room.

I think as an actress, I prefer having a character on the page. It allows you to be more invested in actually creating a whole person. It’s easier when you’re not trying to come up with your next line on the spot.

I’m so interested in taking tropes from other movies and putting them on something where it doesn’t belong.

I’m really interested in trying to tell stories about women that don’t involve romantic components. That’s so much a part of the way we feel about female characters and their needs that it feels like it’s built in – but I’d like to find a way that it’s not. There are so many more stories than that.

For me, the French new wave is Truffaut and Rohmer. Godard I sometimes have trouble with because he’s very much of a director’s director. I feel Truffaut is such a humanist, and I always go in that direction.

I don’t know any woman who has a simple relationship with their mother or with their daughter.

I always feel like a vague failure in L.A. – it always makes me feel like I should somehow be different than I am. And I don’t know why.

For Mike Mills, I learned that having dance parties and crying with your cast does not make you a weak director, it makes you a strong director.

As an actor, I just go off the director. I never ask how big the part is. I don’t look at it from the perspective of, ‘Is this going to be good for my career?’ I just look for directors, and I think part of that is I knew I always wanted to be a director.

There’s something that happens around 27 and 28, when people start coupling off more aggressively or changing their lives according to what their economic prospects are, and not keeping themselves on par with the group – you realise suddenly that they’re not your family. And I think that’s very painful.

I think I’ve always wanted to direct, but I didn’t go to film school. I was lucky enough to work in movies, and I think those became my film school in terms of acting and watching directors work and also writing and co-writing and producing.

One of the great advantages of my time spent in movies and in basically every role possible, both in front of the camera and behind the camera, that I’ve gotten to see all these different ways that people work and the way movies are constructed from the inside out, from beginning to end.

Specifically with directors I’d worked with, and even some that I haven‘t, they were all incredibly generous with me, having really long conversations about what they felt was useful as tips.

I feel so part of the filmmaking community. It’s amazing how much people support each other.

There’s a style in modern dance right now called Release Technique. It’s based on a feeling of falling and catching yourself, and I thought it was such a good metaphor for the way life feels.

When I read ‘Greenberg,’ I had a really strong sense if I could be any kind of writer I wanted to be, I’d be this kind of writer. And I felt like, even in my experiences, what writing I had done, even on a small scale, when it was good, it shared some quality with it.