Karen Allen Quotations

I've had so many people just come up to me and say, 'When you came up on the screen, everybody in the theater applauded.' It's just so sweet, really.

When independent films break through and actually make it into any level of mainstream-ness or get seen by people or find a life actually in theaters, it's extraordinary. And it doesn't happen that often.

When I was in my 20s and 30s, there was such a variety and diversity of types of films that you could see. So many of them were really more about the human condition and about relationships between people, and they were smaller films that had a much greater impact on me as a human being.

CGI is to me like watching a cartoon. It can be effective, if it's done well. A lot of times you don't feel any real risk. You're watching a bunch of computer-generated graphics.

I'm always surprised when people say, "Oh, it got such mixed reviews." I guess I didn't read them.

I have to say from an actor's perspective, to work with a director who has been an actor through most of their career is a pleasure. They generally have a very deep understanding of the process of what you're doing, of how you are building and exploring the character.

I was quite eager to work, anytime somebody was offering me a job, if I liked the role. Because I was always very discriminating from the very beginning, in the sense that I had absolutely no problem saying no to jobs when they came along if somehow they didn't fit into my universe - whatever that was.

I was always drawn toward the Actor's Studio. I studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute when I first came to New York. One of my favorite teachers was one of Al [Pachino]'s teachers, a guy named Charlie Laughton, who was just a wonderful, wonderful man.

For me, the motivation really was to work with Al Pacino. To me, that seemed like an incredible opportunity, just a learning opportunity because I thought so highly of him.

There is a difference when you work with actors who have worked on the stage. When we're out there in front of an audience eight times a week, you can't do it on your own.