Laura Linney

I am very lucky, because for the most part people are very nice to me, and I am still able to go about my life and ride the subway and all that.

A lot of what is publicized now is really pretty trivial stuff - you know, what I eat for breakfast, where I have my pedicures, questions that I just cannot for the life of me understand why someone would want to know that.

I believe that no matter what you do in life, if you learn the basics through theater, it will help you in everything else - problem solving, communication, discipline, all of that stuff.

Comedy is a way to make sense of chaos. It's a way of dealing with things that are overwhelming, that threaten you; it's a way to survive and get closer to the truth.

It's always nice when you do something and it's well received as opposed to the other way which God knows happens to everybody. When the good times come around, you take a deep breath, appreciate it, but not take it too seriously.

It's very hard to put forth a film that's about love and the joy of love and for it not to be patronising and not make people nauseous or make them roll their eyes.

I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side.

My family is from the South, and I can remember all those ladies I grew up with, like my great-aunts, who had handkerchiefs. There's something sweet about them.

Working with special needs children is hard.

With big, emotional roles it's very easy, especially if you've grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character.

My castings sort of go in phases. There'll be several icy professional parts - a lawyer or a cop. And then there'll be the intelligent-but-wounded group and then the period things. It goes in sequence.

I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write. Language and punctuation is used specifically, and most of the time actors can find wonderful clues about character in the rhythm and cadence of the language used.