Jennifer Jason Leigh Quotes

Quotes by and about Jennifer Jason Leigh

(Continued from her main entry on the site.)

Leigh: "[I] don't plan things. I live a month at a time."

Leigh: "[I can relate to someone] who puts on a record and ... stares at the lava lamp for hours. I've done that. I can vague out for hours on the couch. I'm not a pacer."

Leigh: "I like generating my own material and getting to express my idiosyncratic ideas."

Leigh: "I use a lot of myself in [my character] Catherine. She's probably closest to me, closer to me than the other characters I've played in terms of her introversion and shyness and awkwardness. Her inability to articulate, being out of place - I often feel that way. ... There's a lot about Catherine that I understand, certainly the way she is at a party: awkward at the table, that's me. Everything is slightly off. That's why I don't go to parties. I can't try to make conversation with people I don't know. I don't know why; it's just impossible unless I really know someone. Yeah, like party dialogue, I'm not gifted at that, and neither is she."

Leigh: "I could never play the ingenue, the girl next door or the very successful young doctor. That would be a bore."

Mike Leigh: "She is an extraordinary character actor. ... She's got a real strong sense of the real world and of real people and the pain of existing and all that stuff."

The Guardian: "A reviewer once remarked that Jennifer Jason Leigh makes even the most mainstream film seem arthouse just by being in it, and she has much the same effect on real life. Whatever she's talking about, you have the sense that something importantly weird is about to happen."

Movieline Magazine: "Unlike most stars, Leigh doesn't seem to worry too much about where she stands in Hollywood. Critics tagged her as one of the most gifted actresses of her generation, but even critical approval seems vaguely irrelevant to her."

Nathaniel Rogers: "[In person she is] altogether lacking in pretense."