Tatiana Maslany Quotes

Have fun, be yourself, enjoy life and stay positive.

I'm fascinated with psychology, and with why a person walks the way they walk or why they walk into a room the way they do or why we are the way we are, and it's not exclusive to the psychology of a character.

Trust your gut. You know yourself, so don't let somebody else tell you who you are.

Those darker sides, the things that we don't want to admit about ourselves - that's what excites me.

It's wild to be seen differently and have more visibility, but it's rewarding.

As a kid, I wanted to be a boy because I equated that with strength. There's a problem with that. It's only growing into my own womanhood that I realize how warped that is that I was attributing strength to male qualities.

Go with your gut every single time. It’s never, ever wrong. Even if feels like everybody else is telling you that you need to do this or do that. Your gut is your artist and who you are as a person and what makes you special, and what makes you an interesting performer. Never try to be something you’re not.

All the foundation work you plant in the early seasons pay off in stronger storylines deep into our seasons. I think that only aids in performance.

My brothers are so much a part of who I am, and such a large part of my heart and my drive. I've never had a kid, but I understand that whole, "I would kill for my family" kind of thing. I understood it, it resonated with me. It's a very primal, animal thing that you feel for your family.

There's something about music that makes me feel like a different person, that feels like an escape.

I love nerdy work. I love writing notes. I try to go back, as much as I can, to feed what happens and why they do what they do.

I think being idle is quite hard for me to do.

It's the reason we go to films and watch television: to escape the mundane nature of life and see another world and see ourselves in that other world. I think that's what sci-fi does so well.

Sometimes I'll go into a shop and speak in a different accent to see if I can pull it off. But then somebody will be like, 'Where did you say you were from again?' And then I panic, and my accent dissolves, and I pretend like I wasn't doing it in the first place.

The most bizarre demographics come up to me. Men in their 50s come up to me and are like, "Alison is my favorite. I hated her at first, and now I love her." I don't know what that says about people's psychology.

So much of how you look at yourself in the mirror reflects how you feel about yourself, and how you comport yourself.

I love performing. I love doing improv. It's a totally terrifying experience, but it's something that I've always felt so strongly about and that I'm kind of obsessed with. And just as an actor, it's a great exercise. It's a great playground, you know, to try things out and to work on your skills. Because the mandate of improv is kind of the same as acting: It's all about your scene partner, it's all about being present and in the moment and exploring together as a team, a collaboration.

I think the fact that my parents are still, "Hey, great, that's great!" and not, "We need you to do this and be a star!" - it was never like that. My mom's a translator, my dad's a woodworker; that's the world I grew up in, that's the world I'm most comfortable in. The whole idea of Hollywood or any of that other stuff that unfortunately goes along with film, that wasn't part of my upbringing, thankfully.

Sexuality is so much more complex than our boobs. My sexuality isn't me as an object to be looked at. It's the way I say "hello" to somebody, the way I sit with somebody. A body is just a body. But we're really afraid of bodies. They hold a lot of power - I think that's why people can try to shame them so easily, because they are so powerful.

I think the sci-fi world allows for exploration of that that isn't on the nose and that isn't preachy, but it's kind of artful and explores it differently. I think there's more imagination in sci-fi. There's more chance to kind of explore perspective and not have it so grounded in this world that we live in, which is so stuck in a patriarchal kind of system.

I'm so inspired and stimulated by the work that it doesn't ever feel like work.

As artists, you always want to push yourself. There's always new territory.

I have trouble sleeping, at the end of the night. There's a lot of stimulus and my brain is processing a lot of different arcs and personalities. I'm always processing things, so I don't sleep.

Clothing and makeup and hair and all of that so much indicates the kind of person you are inside and the person you are presenting on the outside. Sometimes they are in conflict, and sometimes they are the same. That psychology of the exterior informing the interior is just so interesting.

I'm at the transition place myself, still playing high school girls but moving to a stage when I'm playing older roles and going to the places of stillness and wisdom and knowledge and weight. It's exciting and scary.