As an actress for most of my life, I am profoundly familiar with poverty.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've experienced poverty and plenty, and there's a lesson to be learned when you're brought up in poverty.
The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as 'Soho' poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.
I would say that many of the characters in my stories do not live in true poverty - they are not out on the street; they are not wondering if there will be anything to eat in the next week. They are people who are at the lower echelons of the economic strata.
I've learned to take jobs as an actress that is meaningful to me because I've never taken a job for the money.
It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end.
I look at being an actress as being like a mummy: You're bandaged up and preserved as soon as you start making other people money.
There are wonderfully talented actresses. It's a really rich field. There isn't as rich a field of material.
I will always think about uplifting the lives of the poor because I know what they feel. I have not heard about poverty; I have not read about poverty: I have experienced poverty.
When the producers of 'Why Poverty?' came to me to do a film about poverty in the United States, I asked if I could do a film about wealth instead. I tend to make films about perpetrators, rather than victims.
As an actress, you have to give your character a life, a history, and make it full and rich for yourself.