Vera Farmiga's Quotes

Normally, I rely heavily on my director to massage me out of my actor comfort zones.

Someone once told me that religion is like a knife: You can stab someone with it, or you can slice bread with it.

The Ukrainian community is tight-knit by nature.

There's no wrong way to experience a film.

We are all seekers in some way. There are those of us who think they have all the answers and there are those of us who may never get an answer.

We take a lot for granted as second wave feminists, what our mothers and aunts did for us.

When I look at female characters, I want to recognize myself in them: my trials, my tribulations as a mother, as a lover, as a daughter.

Whether we call it religion or faith, we all battle for a balanced integrated soul.

Whether you're making a million dollar film or a $100 million film there is never enough money, there's never enough time.

You don't have to be gay to be attracted to your friend.

You don't necessarily have to be religious to pray.

You ought to have a perspective when you're making a film.

Your soul either feels lifted by something that you read, or it feels squashed by it.

Editing yourself is like an irksome coin toss. You've got to strip yourself of super ego and operate from the id. Maybe I've got my Freud mixed up. It's just hard to trade a beauty shot for the performance with truth and a brightly lit zit.

I feel my fuller-bodied characters are all in the independent films I do, and in the studio productions, I have to work harder to dimensionalize the characters. And that's certainly part of the job description of an actor - that's what you're supposed to do - but you have to work harder at it in the characters that I've encountered in studio films.

I hate being manipulated by song. Don't tell me what I should be feeling. I don't want cellos or violins to be telling me that I should be bawling right now.

I love Saturday nights with my best friend and a big bowl of pasta, wanting a good scare, something that will say, 'Listen, your life is not as bad as this. Your life can be so much worse.'

I think I always try to be accommodating and open and available and proving for my director. I love to give as many takes as they want. I love to give them as many choices as they want.

I'm saying that the depth of exploration of the male psyche and the female psyche is uneven. I see further, deeper renderings of what it means to be a man.

I've never felt the breath of God - you can take that statement literally or metaphorically - more than when I was yearning for a personal, intimate connection to something bigger than me.

My father instilled in me - of utmost importance and innate in me is the yearning to determine for myself - to define God, to define holiness for myself.

My only real advice to Oscar nominees is, 'If you haven't actually seen a competitor's film, don't fib and say you have and blow smoke up their wahooziewhatsits.' Always best to be frank and tell them the truth.

Offers come all the time, but I'm pretty particular. I really have to be wowed by a character I encounter in a script, or a storyline. I really do need to feel inspiration, otherwise I'm just happy planting perennials and making goat cheese.

Ruminants are a perfectly normal thing to possess when you live in upstate New York. It's just moving scenery. It's kind of like the equivalent of Great Danes. It's the way you keep your grass mowed. It's the way you keep your weed-whacking to a minimum.

The limelight is a tricky place, because you can't believe what's going on around you. You stop observing. You stop perceiving. You stop extending yourself, and you become isolated.

The more people know about you, the more face-time you get in the media, the harder your job becomes to create a character in whom people suspend disbelief.

There are some times when I think acting can be a noble profession. And when those rare roles come along, like 'Down to the Bone,' you have the opportunity to be of service.

There are women who make things better, there are women who change things, there are women who make things happen, who make a difference. I want to be one of those women.

There really are three types of 'religious' movies: the ones that make fun of it, the ones that vilify it and the ones that literally preach to the converted.

We're all sick of holy wars and bloodshed because religion is supposed to give us life and a better life and is supposed to bring out our best self. When it results in mass destruction and hatred and anxiety, it's the antithesis I think of what religion was designed to do.

Working with children is a whole other ball game. They're like little animals. You have to keep the camera turned on them all the time. Sometimes it takes a 41-minute take to get one sentence out in a believable way.

You earn very little money on independent films and I'm the provider for my home, so I do have to think of taking one for the accountant time and again and that means studio pictures.

I've always believed that if you are precise in your thoughts, it's not the lines you say that are important - it's what exists between the lines. What I'm compelled by most is that transparency of thought, what is left unspoken.

Doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. It encompasses cynicism but also genuine questioning.

Music is what our feelings sound like.

I think God gave us senses of humor, and we should use them.

Sometimes I attract roles that are necessary either for personal growth or enlightenment.

In these times, in this harsh, rude, warring world that we live in, where most of the bloodshed is 'My god is greater than your god,' and we're fighting in the name of our god, we have to find a way to peaceably coexist, spiritually.

It's a very different thing, religion and faith. Religion is man-made, it's man-regulated. And faith, you can define God as you wish. But I think they're two different things.

The biggest research of all when I do a character is self-examination. You look at yourself and you ask, 'How am I similar to this person and how am I different?'

Am I ambitious? I used to be afraid of that word but now I think ambition is a good thing.

As an actor, you're sort of the court-appointed lawyer for the character.

Do I pray? Yes. Prayer is very important to me.

Editing is not a part of the filmmaking process I've ever been privy to as an actress.

Faith is important to me.

Honestly, I think a good film is spiritual, regardless of whether its subject is faith.

I am drawn to intimate, often uncomfortable portraits of a woman persevering and awakening.

I can't get my knickers in a twist about my age and ageing in an industry that caters to the ids of 14-year-olds.

I chase after inspiring stories.

I come from a massive family, and the youngest is twentysomething years younger than I am, so I grew up with children.

I didn't grow up watching film but as a Ukrainian-American, music and stories and dance are crucial.

I don't have a caustic sense of humor. What I find funny, that humor comes from a much gentler place.

I don't necessarily need Hollywood.

I grew up in a Ukrainian Catholic-turned-Christian household, and that is my family's faith.

I have tender, romantic associations with upstate New York.

I have the best husband a wife could possibly have. He's the best father my children could have.

I just can't feel lukewarm about a character. I either despise her, admire her, or don't understand her and want to understand her.

The human face is the organic seat of beauty. It is the register of value in development, a record of Experience, whose legitimate office is to perfect the life, a legible language to those who will study it, of the majestic mistress, the soul.

Each of the Arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a Muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.

The ultimate aim of the human mind, in all its efforts, is to become acquainted with Truth.

Our own theological Church, as we know, has scorned and vilified the body till it has seemed almost a reproach and a shame to have one, yet at the same time has credited it with power to drag the soul to perdition.