Holly Hunter

Sometimes you have to marinate instead of making a quick decision. I appreciate my instincts, but my instincts can be dead wrong. Circumspection can give you time.

I always had an acting crush on Philip Seymour Hoffman. He just wowed me all the time. He was just quietly so impressive and so private.

I started doing repertory theatre in upstate New York when I was 15, went back when I was 16, and by that time decided that I really wanted to study drama seriously and go to an acting conservatory called Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

The self-help section of national bookstore chains in America is one of the largest sections. In a way, it's nothing new, and in another way, very new. People have always searched for answers; that's why we have religion. People have always been seeking some relief from their own mortality.

People have always searched for answers. That's why we have religion; people have always been seeking some relief from their own mortality.

The whole idea of death is something that we tend to kind of really not deal with at all.

People think I disappear sporadically, but I just do projects that don't get international acclaim.

The first and most important thing you need to be creative is to relax, particularly for the actors.

I don't make decisions just on the character I'm supposed to play. Sometimes it's based on the director, sometimes it's based on the story, sometimes I need money, or sometimes I'm just starved to work.

Sometimes I take a movie that I know is not great; it's not great on the page, but I need to work. Sometimes I need to make the money. I need dough. I want to work, and so I'll take something that is compromised in some arena. But it's like, actors gotta act.

I don't offer advice to actors only because I've seen actors become successful through ways that would never even occur to me or that wouldn't work for me. But this has worked for me: Never memorizing a scene.

Sometimes it's the script or an opportunity to work with an incredible director.