Blythe Danner Quotes

For a woman who’s a widow and pretty much a loner, I can walk out, and I’m surrounded by NYU kids. The energy jumps off the sidewalks, and I never feel sad or bored.

Actors are very generous.

I loved the first Christmas I had in England.

I’ve always just adored music. It’s my first love, really. I admire and respect people in the music business. You really have to work hard and diligently. Sometimes actors can be lazy and get away with it, but you can’t do that if you’re a musician.

Onstage or in films, you do affect peoples’ lives, and sometimes that’s very gratifying. But still, there’s this little voice that says you should be doing something that matters.

Being a grandmother is probably the most important thing to me. I have two really rambunctious little ones, and I love spending time with them.

I feel that its our children who do give us hope because they are the ones who are going to save the world.

I try to avoid a specific image. I seek to play as many different women as I can to avoid having a label put on me.

I was raised in a time where children were still seen and not heard basically, so I think a lot of us in my generation went the other way and just tried to be as much more liberal and open and we’re still paying for it.

Maybe subconsciously I’ve kept activism separate from acting because it’s important to me in a more profound way.

I’ve kept my sanity in this business by trying out for a role and then going home and trying to forget about it.

Mostly, I spend my time being a mother to my two children, working in my organic garden, raising masses of sweet peas, being passionately involved in conservation, recycling and solar energy.

I’ve always had a middling kind of a career, not great highs and great lows.

I got to Broadway a year after I came to New York. I starred in ‘Butterflies Are Free’ and got a Tony for it. Right out of the gate. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t very gracious about it. I wasn’t driven. And right after ‘Butterflies Are Free’, I got married and then started a family. I always wanted that.

You learn more discipline in the theatre than you do in movies or TV. You’re on stage every night and you have to sustain your energy level tor several hours.

I really do like being independent, and I don’t want to have to rely on anyone else to cart me around if I break a bone.

Whatever comes my way I’m basically interested in.

I really pulled back on my career when the kids were young and my husband and I made a pact never to work while the other one was.

Whether you’re on TV or on the stage, you have to work hard to stay fresh, real, and full of energy. You can’t settle back. You always have to stay on your toes.

I feel a little guilty only being an actor.

Singing and dancing will never grow old for me – I’d like to do that until I’m… actually, I think I’d like to drop dead onstage. I think that’d be just great.

I travel so much when I work, I’ve really been happy to do ‘Nice Work’ because I feel like a true New Yorker again. I have my little regimen during the day, and I can take advantage of the museums and the things that I love. And people watching!

My earliest memories of Gwyneth first singing is in bed when we would make up songs. The most I could do was harmonize, like, a third above, and at two years old, she’d be doing sixths. I said, ‘Where in the world did that come from?’ She’d just make up songs.

Just look at my face. Its an extraordinary experience. All of my friends who are grandparents have been saying, just wait, a bit cynically, but its just extraordinary. You feel like a child again yourself. Just walking on air.

My theory in anything you do is to keep exploring, keep digging deeper to find new stuff.