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One Time, Many, Many Years Ago, I Had The Opportunity To Dye My Hair Brunette For A Film. And The Day I Walked Out Of The Hotel Where I Had It Done, I Walked Out Onto The Street And Realized People Looked Me In The Eye And Greeted Me Good Morning. I'd Never Had That Experience Before! And I Began To Notice That A Brunette Is Treated As An Affable Human Being. Later, When I Dyed My Hair For Lois Riley Blonde, And Then Alice Ward Blonde, People Come Right Up To You, They Touch You On The Arm, They Ask You How You're Doing. Men And Women Both! Blondes Have More Fun.

-Melissa Leo

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One Time, Many, Many

Melissa Leo

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One Time, Many, Many Years Ago, I Had The Opportunity To Dye My Hair Brunette For A Film. And The Day I Walked Out Of The Hotel Where I Had It Done, I Walked Out Onto The Street And Realized People Looked Me In The Eye And Greeted Me Good Morning. I'd Never Had That Experience Before! And I Began To Notice That A Brunette Is Treated As An Affable Human Being. Later, When I Dyed My Hair For Lois Riley Blonde, And Then Alice Ward Blonde, People Come Right Up To You, They Touch You On The Arm, They Ask You How You're Doing. Men And Women Both! Blondes Have More Fun.

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Acting Is The Business Of Truth, So That We Can See Ourselves Reflected Back And Learn.

One Time, Many, Many Years Ago, I Had The Opportunity To Dye My Hair Brunette For A Film. And The Day I Walked Out Of The Hotel Where I Had It Done, I Walked Out Onto The Street And Realized People Looked Me In The Eye And Greeted Me Good Morning. I'd Never Had That Experience Before! And I Began To Notice That A Brunette Is Treated As An Affable Human Being. Later, When I Dyed My Hair For Lois Riley Blonde, And Then Alice Ward Blonde, People Come Right Up To You, They Touch You On The Arm, They Ask You How You're Doing. Men And Women Both! Blondes Have More Fun.

You Can't Really Gauge The Difficulties Of Television. There's Difficulties And Joys That Happen With An Amazing, Great Team, When One Is Working. Television Can Be A Very Frustrating Job For Almost Anybody Working In Television, Because You're Shooting Episodically, And You Don't Know One Scene From The Next, And Maybe They Change Around.

Being An Actor On A Movie Set Is Like Going To The Playground At Recess.

That's Probably The Biggest Secret Of Acting: If The Actor Believes It Themselves, They Can Make You Believe It.

As Actors, Emotion Is The Sand In The Sandbox For Us. Without Emotion, There's Nothing To Play - And We Are Playing. We Know That. Whether You Think We Do Or Not, We Know That.

The Director Is The Captain Of The Ship, Without Question. No Matter What Their Talent Or Energy Level Is, Everyone On The Crew Has All Eyes On The Captain. If They Come In Going, "i Don't Know. Maybe We'll Do This. Maybe We'll Do That," You've Got 10 Days To Shoot And They Don't Care What You're Doing.

An Actor Has To Be Very, Very Careful, As One Of The Most Wonderful Props - And Actors Love Props - Is A Cigarette. There's So Much To Do With It: You Can Bring It Up To Your Face, Play With The Smoke. It's Just The Greatest - Ever Since I Was 16 And In Acting School In England, I've Been Playing Around With Cigarettes.

I Think The Funny Thing About Acting For Me - And I Hold It In A Very Holy, Spiritual Way - Not To Be Overly Fundamentalist About It, But It's That Important To Me - Is That It Is An Ancient Healing Art.

There Is A Wealth Of Knowledge To Be Understood From Others' Work, Don't Get Me Wrong, And When I Do Stumble Upon Others' Work, It's Not Lost On Me.

The Power Of Television - It's So Present In Our Lives, We Don't Even Know How Powerful It Is.

You Have This Certain About Of Responsibility To Play A Fictitious Character And You Have A Script That's Guiding You And The Other Information Of The Custom Department's Choices, And The Set Department, "where Are You," And All Those Other Pieces Of Information But You Have To Cull From Your Imagination The Answer To All The Unasked Questions. And With A Real Person, There's Someone To Get That Information From, Perhaps.

I Think This Notion Of Acting And Glamour Is Getting In Everybody's Way.

I Love Acting. I Really Do. I Think That's Maybe The One Thing That Is Known About Me.

I Definitely Consider Myself A Method Actor, Because Of My Training. I Might Dispute What People Consider A Method Actor To Be. For My Money, A Method Actor Is An Actor Who Has A Technique. That Has A Method. And Not One Method, But Whatever Might Be Required. So A Method Actor Is Always Learning.

I Am A Smoker, I'm Ashamed To Say. I Had Given It Up For Many Years, Then Picked It Up Again. It's A Horrible Habit. I Struggle With Myself All The Time. And I Love To Smoke.

The Climate Informs The Character.

"i'm Going To Show You I Haven't Given You Permission Because Clearly You're Not Grown Up Enough To Understand That, Not Having Given You Permission, You Can't Just Come Look In My House." And I Won't Know If They're Coming And Looking Or Not... So I Put A Piece Of Tape Over It.

I Don't Tend To Use Technology All That Much. Of Course, I Can't Avoid It - It's Called The Telephone Nowadays. And I Do A Certain Amount Of Email, Work-related Primarily, On It. But I Don't Do A Lot Of Looking For Things Online.

I Have Been Known For Almost 30 Years To Sort Of Do Whatever Comes My Way. It's Always Been Touch-and-go After Each Job Finishes. I Just Like To Be Working.

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It Becomes More And More Popular To Call Actors Who Play Characters "character Actors." But I've Always Been Somebody Who Is Much More Invested In Who I Am Playing Than How They Look.

I Was Really Not Familiar At All With Edward Snowden. I Like To Get That Right Out Of The Way And Really Learned Most Of What I Know From Oliver's [stones] Script.

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I Do, However, Have Tape Over My Eyepiece As Well. What I Think My Peace Is Saying Isn't, "oh I Have Something To Hide. I Don't Want You To Look," It's More Saying, "no Thank You. I Prefer You Not Look. I'm Not Giving You Permission."

I'm Very Old-school. I Like A Director To Direct Me. I Like To Be The Actor. I'm Not Particularly Fond Of The Hybrid Writer-director, Or Actor-director. Writers, Directors, Actors Are All Such Very Different People. I Think It's Unusual That Two Of Those People Are In One Human.

I Am A Smoker, I'm Ashamed To Say. I Had Given It Up For Many Years, Then Picked It Up Again. It's A Horrible Habit. I Struggle With Myself All The Time. And I Love To Smoke. An Actor Has To Be Very, Very Careful, As One Of The Most Wonderful Props - And Actors Love Props - Is A Cigarette. There's So Much To Do With It: You Can Bring It Up To Your Face, Play With The Smoke. It's Just The Greatest - Ever Since I Was 16 And In Acting School In England, I've Been Playing Around With Cigarettes.

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I'm A Little Bit Of A Glutton For Punishment, Especially When It Comes To Work. I Don't Mind A Bit Of Suffering. I Think It's In Suffering That We Realize Our Best Selves.

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