If you are the writer/director especially, no one cares more about the project than you do. You know it in and out. You created it. So always listen to input but don't be afraid to veto and fight decisions that you know instinctively are wrong.
I love when I'm writing and I'm cringing because I know I'm doing something right.
Work very very hard. This business is no joke. Make sure you know what you want or you might be taking someone else's view instead of your own.
The celebrity culture demands a camera-ready-at-all-times look or else the photo is circulated in a demeaning headline.
I wouldn't say that I was an actress. I tried to be an actress. I really didn't have the gift.
In a way I'm lucky because when people suggest I won't be able to do something I have no choice but to show them they are wrong. If I say I'm doing it, I'm doing it. No matter how hard it is.
When you create, it comes from this deep part of you, and your job is you, and so when you don't get heard it can feel bad and frustrating and you have to somehow keep the confidence up.
I will watch a ton of movies while I'm writing for inspiration. "Postcards from the Edge" was one. I love the mother-daughter relationship and all the hard humiliating stuff she has to go through. Or thinks she has to go through.
It was fun to create characters who had truth to them but were also made up so as not to completely offend!
I'm pretty sure a lot of directors would be thrilled to cast age appropriate roles. I am.
My actress friends would tell me their horror stories, or say they couldn't get work, and were deemed too old, even though they were established and talented and fit and gorgeous. It was frustrating for them and it was frustrating to hear. Maybe because I was the same age as them and it was already hard enough trying to cross over to the 40s without someone judging your every move.
Actresses feel immense pressure to keep up. Nobody wants someone who doesn't know how to market themselves.
The pressure for an actress to look good and be skeletally thin is insane and unrealistic and it's a subject I've been fascinated by.
There is another movie I love that always sticks with me and influenced me called "Frankie" starring Diane Kruger as a model past her prime trying to make it work and going crazy from how she is treated.
I work hard and support myself.