If you're not growing, you're dying, and I'm not ready for that.
My mother was a gorgeous person with no vanity, but she was a really good soul.
I got my SAG card on my first movie, 'Goin' South,' with Jack Nicholson in 1978.
My family didn't have money to travel, so reading was how I knew about the world. It made me hungry to have more experiences than just what I could possibly experience in Arkansas.
I loved Westerns for different reasons as an adult. It is not only our only native brand of storytelling - the only one that's not influenced by Europeans and not something that's done better by the French - but I also love the sensuality of the Western. The sights, sounds, and smell of a Western are very exciting.
For me, acting has often been solitary. You're all together, and then boom, you're gone.
There's a certain arrogance to an actor who will look at a script and feel like, because the words are simple, maybe they can paraphrase it and make it better.
I decided if you're lucky enough to be alive, you should use each birthday to celebrate what your life is about.
I know that's why I became an actress. In my dream world, I could get mad and scream and yell, and if somebody died, they got up again. In real life, I didn't dare try it.
My heritage, many generations back, is Dutch and it was fun to go where nobody asked me how to pronounce my name.
I want women, especially young women, to create a world where your success is not based on being young.
I'm not saying it's easy, and it's definitely harder for women. Because there is definitely a double standard about gorgeous older men, and it's different for older women.
The part in 'Philadelphia' where I represent the law firm that's firing Tom Hanks, that was a hard part for me because I lost one of my best friends to AIDS, and it was hard for me to play a part that wasn't sympathetic to someone with AIDS.
Christopher Lloyd was actually the first person - or certainly one of the first few - who ever spoke to me on film.
I take the fact that films cost a lot of money very seriously, but once in a while to have somebody say, This is a big scene, take your time with it, is important. That's John Sayles.
My son, he has a film group, a bunch of film nerds that sit around and screen movies, and when they had Mary Steenburgen Night, the two movies they screened were 'Melvin And Howard' and 'Clifford.'
I feel like I'm attracted to characters who have one foot firmly planted on the ground. And their heads up in the clouds somewhere. Practical dreamers. They try to impress you that they've got this whole thing figured out, but there's more going on inside their heads than you might imagine.
'Last Man On Earth,' I have to say, is a love for me. I mean, a true passion. To people who haven't watched it or who've watched a little and thought, 'Ah, I don't know where this is going,' or whatever, I urge them to check it out again.
There's a style to doing period pieces, and you can't do a Western without understanding 'My Darling Clementine.'
In my business, guys may age, but it's not even a question they're valued. But women my age are supposed to disappear.
