Phyllis Smith Quotes

I had a really fantastic time shooting ‘Bad Teacher.’ I loved every second of it.

We are made up of multiple emotions. And it would be unnatural to completely eliminate even one or two or three of those. It’s impossible. You’d become a robot if the emotions weren’t there.

I feel like I’m an ordinary person, but I’ve had extraordinary opportunities in my later life, and I never saw any of it coming. I never saw ‘The Office‘ coming, I never saw ‘Inside Out’ coming, and I just feel grateful and thankful to have these opportunities and to have an actual real enthusiasm in my life.

I find myself dancing in the grocery store.

I’m just a normal person, believe me.

Sadness is a necessary emotion. It’s maybe not the most pleasant one to have, but it’s cathartic.

IMDB’s not the most accurate. Even my birth place and my age are wrong there.

God truly had a better plan for me than I had imagined. You never know what life has in store.

I wish I had paid more attention in my psych class in college. I would’ve had a broader vocabulary to draw from.

We all have these emotions, but you never really want to own up to sadness. You want to bury it.

When I was little, my mom would dress me up and take me downtown on the Carondelet bus, which in itself was exciting. We would go to see Santa Claus at Famous-Barr. The decorations were so pretty. The line was long, but that just gave me more time to enjoy Santa’s Toyland. I loved every minute of it.

When I was in casting, we would bring somebody in, have them read their lines, maybe give them a few pointers, and hire them, and then once they go to the set and you have a director who‘s directing them, that performance may not be anywhere near what you had in the audition, either good or bad.

When I hurt my knee, I knew it was time to retire from dancing, and I needed a job just to pay the bills, and I ended up as a receptionist for about three-four years.

Just go for it. Don’t be afraid of trying new things. You have absolutely no idea what’s going to present itself to you. Don’t be frightened. Just buckle down and do whatever your heart desires.

As a dancer, one of my many teachers along the way made the comment that who I was onstage and who I was off were two totally different people.

I want to do the best and be the best at what I do.

For me, I want to find the truth in the word and the character and the line.

Life is not all a bowl of cherries. There are days when you aren’t going to feel up to par. And it’s healthy to see it in yourself and to ask, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’

One of the first places I was ever recognized after ‘The Office’ came out was at Target in Los Angeles. Someone came up to me, and she said, ‘Are you Phyllis from ‘The Office?” We were in different aisles, but she had recognized my voice.

Hopefully, ‘Inside Out’ will have the longevity that those older movies have, and many years down the line, people will be able to watch it and find some kinship with it.

I know I’m not supposed to talk about God and stuff, but my spiritual life is very strong, and I really feel that a big part of whatever success I’m having is due to that as well.

I had one young man tell me he wished I was his mom. Another young woman told me that every time she watched ‘The Office,’ I reminded her of her mother, who had just passed away a year ago, and that every time she saw me she felt as if she had a piece of her mom still with her.

Everybody wants to shine a little bit, even a wallflower.

The discipline as a dancer carried over into my life.

One day, I was taken into a room with 25 animators, all working on Sadness. They asked me a lot of questions, and they got something of the way I move into the character.

My love for dance was so strong.

My family in St. Louis brings me to my roots.

I believe in angels.

I have said in many interviews that God had a better plan for me than I ever anticipated. I still firmly believe that, and I am grateful for a prayer answered.

Even before ‘The OA,’ I was a very spiritual person.

I do like comedy and drama.

I’ve just tried to be a responsible person and pay my bills. But whatever it is I do, I want to do the best I can.

Everybody involved in Pixar, I’ve not met one person who’s not incredibly creative and nice and lovely and know what they’re doing.

In my heart, my first desire was to be a dancer. I always wanted to dance and I danced from the time I was 7 till I was well into my 30s.

Generally, I’m not sad. I mean, everyone has sad moments.

I once prayed when struggling financially and worried how I was going to be able to assist my parents in their latter years living thousands of miles away, to help me win the lottery or something. And I did win the lottery, just in a different and better way.

I’m generally pretty happy about life.

If I wasn’t going to be able to dance professionally, I wasn’t going to dance. That’s my all-or nothing personality coming out.

I’m not accomplished enough to over-analyze something, because I don’t have the background as far as people who write and know how to break down a character or story and stuff. I mostly go by gut instincts.

I grew up when Disney was doing movies like Cinderella, and all the girls were princesses.

I did ballet, tap, jazz, modern, I taught dance here in my hometown of St. Louis.

I’ve had an experience that… I don’t know the right label to put to it, if it was an angel or Jesus or what. Nobody knows anything for sure about that, but I know that I had an encounter, and I know that things exist beyond this realm, most definitely. I’m grounded in that.

We’re not whole people if we’re just one emotion. On any given day, you can be happy, sad, angry, and so on… As you mature, you just learn to deal with each one of those emotions.

I know how difficult it is for actors to get work, because I did casting for all those years.