Olivia Williams Quotes

When the Hollywood thing happened, I thought at some point I'd get to the front of the queue: 'Yes, hello, I'd like to play that role.' But you don't. You just join a different queue.

My parents have always been cool. They even became surrogates to friends of mine who didn't have such supportive parents.

Family holidays and weekends are really brightly colored memories, full of my mother and father, rather than our nannies and au pairs.

My parents' long and happy marriage was a great ideal to live up to, but a tough one.

The best Christmas present I got from my husband was a week to do whatever I wanted.

I tried not to get too addicted to reading the Whedonesque website, because it could become obsessive. They were a charming and loyal bunch of people to whom I'm eternally grateful.

The excruciating moments of drama are when people are allowed to show or say what they feel.

I don't tend to spend the whole day in the personality of the person I'm playing.

I'm not much of a Method actress, so even though my character in The Ghost Writer was quite dark and bad-tempered, I could only do that if I was seeming quite perky.

When Roman Polanski did give you a "Great, great, great!" you were just like, "Thank you, Lord, for this magical moment."

I really needed to have something in my life, because I realized there were other things more important than my career. So I love having my children and my family.

I think it's quite lucky that I lead this lifestyle, and in fact, my career's only gotten better as I've looked older, because it ages you, the uncertainty.

I love the ups and downs and the eccentricities of my career. The worst movies have produced some of the best friendships.

When The Sixth Sense was the No. 1 movie in America, I had a Canadian boyfriend whose only assets at the time were a guitar and a van. I don't know what I was thinking.

I'm 5'9" and have the body of an English person that doesn't know how to diet.

I am the worst judge of how a movie is going to do. I always have great and ambitious hopes, but none of them see the light of day.

I don't feel under pressure to work because I love what I do and I wanted to do the projects that came my way.

I've been lucky enough to kiss three James Bonds on screen: Pierce Brosnan, George Lazenby and Daniel Craig.

My husband Rhashan reminds me of my father because he's got great strength of character.

I thought "I've coped with some crazy situations, and I can do this." But working with Roman Polanski is so different from the fashionable and accepted way of directing now.

I couldn't get any of the ingenue roles when younger because at 5 feet 9 inches with a deep voice I was always too... genue. My career has completely happened since I was 29.

I have many debates now with friends on the changes, and the continuing confusion over bringing up your children, instilling values, letting them make the right choices.

I wanted to play a TV detective because it's a rite of passage; I wanted to experience every area of acting. I haven't done comedy or as much Shakespeare as I had intended.

There's this absurd situation on a movie set where your trailer's here and the set is here and the lunch tent is here, and you're not allowed to get yourself from these three places.