Vera Farmiga Quotes & Sayings

Just because I'm telling a story about a woman losing faith is not my rebellion against what I grew up in. If anything, it really affected the way I approached the story, and in fact, approach everything. I don't judge my characters. — Vera Farmiga

I was very studious and square in college. — Vera Farmiga

My father instilled in me - of utmost importance and innate in me is the yearning to determine for myself - to define God, to define holiness for myself. — Vera Farmiga

It's thematic in my career, if you look at most of my choices. It is some level of exploration of maternal angst and maternal heroism. — Vera Farmiga

Do I observe holy days and holidays? Yeah, the ritual is very important to me. It's part of being Ukrainian Catholic. So every holy day we're baking pierogis and not eating meat. — Vera Farmiga

I'm hooked on Polanski's films, his psychological thrillers. I love 'Rosemary's Baby,' I love 'Repulsion.' — Vera Farmiga

I feel my fuller-bodied characters are all in the independent films I do, and in the studio productions, I have to work harder to dimensionalize the characters. And that's certainly part of the job description of an actor - that's what you're supposed to do - but you have to work harder at it in the characters that I've encountered in studio films. — Vera Farmiga

The limelight is a tricky place, because you can't believe what's going on around you. You stop observing. You stop perceiving. You stop extending yourself, and you become isolated. — Vera Farmiga

Partying has never been my thing. I've been around some wild people. I've been in the same room and watched them experiment, and that's been entertaining. — Vera Farmiga

In the quiet moments, the discoveries are made. — Vera Farmiga

I cherish each director that I have. I want to be maneuvered out of my comfort zones. I don't have the time to prepare. — Vera Farmiga

Faith is important to me. — Vera Farmiga

Normally, I rely heavily on my director to massage me out of my actor comfort zones. — Vera Farmiga

I love Saturday nights with my best friend and a big bowl of pasta, wanting a good scare, something that will say, 'Listen, your life is not as bad as this. Your life can be so much worse.' — Vera Farmiga

We're all sick of holy wars and bloodshed because religion is supposed to give us life and a better life and is supposed to bring out our best self. When it results in mass destruction and hatred and anxiety, it's the antithesis I think of what religion was designed to do. — Vera Farmiga

You earn very little money on independent films and I'm the provider for my home, so I do have to think of taking one for the accountant time and again and that means studio pictures. — Vera Farmiga

I just wanted to make sure that yes, that those horror - they worked as a genre. To me, I just wanted to be touched by the film in the way that I saw plausible. Which is the story about compassion - giving and receiving it in those desperate times of need. — Vera Farmiga

You ought to have a perspective when you're making a film. — Vera Farmiga

When you're breastfeeding a child, you don't have the same retention as you do when you're not. — Vera Farmiga

I didn't grow up watching film but as a Ukrainian-American, music and stories and dance are crucial. — Vera Farmiga

Am I ambitious? I used to be afraid of that word but now I think ambition is a good thing. — Vera Farmiga

I'm a full-time mom. I've never felt as prepared, as before maternity. — Vera Farmiga

I have the best husband a wife could possibly have. He's the best father my children could have. — Vera Farmiga

I'm from the school of, 'if you want more, you have to require more from yourself.' — Vera Farmiga

I grew up in a Christian home. The strictness comes with religion in general. Whether you grew up Jewish or Orthodox Jewish or Muslim, there are certain rules and regulations. But my parents instilled in me the importance of defining God for yourself. — Vera Farmiga

The writers could always do an about-face and change everything — Vera Farmiga

I'm someone who can sit in a Buddhist temple, and I can sit with Pentecostals or with Orthodox Jews, and I still feel like I am in tune with all of them. — Vera Farmiga

I've never felt the breath of God - you can take that statement literally or metaphorically - more than when I was yearning for a personal, intimate connection to something bigger than me. — Vera Farmiga

I don't have a caustic sense of humor. What I find funny, that humor comes from a much gentler place. — Vera Farmiga

I do love directing. I'm only comfortable working in the independent film arena for a very small budget where I have creative control and I can put my stamp on it. — Vera Farmiga

I think I always try to be accommodating and open and available and proving for my director. I love to give as many takes as they want. I love to give them as many choices as they want. — Vera Farmiga

Honesty is not synonymous with truth. — Vera Farmiga

Esquire's all about mommy issues now. Breastfeeding, vaccinations, playdate etiquette. — Vera Farmiga

I think God gave us senses of humor, and we should use them. — Vera Farmiga

I, for one, am tired of seeing movies about men damaging each other. — Vera Farmiga

I just can't feel lukewarm about a character. I either despise her, admire her, or don't understand her and want to understand her. — Vera Farmiga

As an actor, you're sort of the court-appointed lawyer for the character. — Vera Farmiga

I just want to make sure that the thing that I see in it initially, that I think it can be, is not just going to be a horror film and reduced to a jump here and a scream there. But that you can take something away from it. — Vera Farmiga

It's true: I don't remember what life was like before parenthood. — Vera Farmiga

I'm thinking about anything and everything. I'm making stuff up in my head, I'm using sense memory. Sometimes when it doesn't come and you've got no choice because you're getting paid to do it, you grasp at straws. It's always easy now with my kids. I just create some "what-ifs" in my head, something horrible that would devastate me as a mother. — Vera Farmiga

I think maybe I was a shepherdess in a past life. — Vera Farmiga

I always thought Uncle Vanya could be a stoned masterpiece. — Vera Farmiga

We take a lot for granted as second wave feminists, what our mothers and aunts did for us. — Vera Farmiga

The biggest research of all when I do a character is self-examination. You look at yourself and you ask, 'How am I similar to this person and how am I different?' — Vera Farmiga

Music is what our feelings sound like. — Vera Farmiga

Ruminants are a perfectly normal thing to possess when you live in upstate New York. It's just moving scenery. It's kind of like the equivalent of Great Danes. It's the way you keep your grass mowed. It's the way you keep your weed-whacking to a minimum. — Vera Farmiga

Your soul either feels lifted by something that you read, or it feels squashed by it. — Vera Farmiga

When you encounter sophistication in the creation of a female character, you thank the writers and you claim it. — Vera Farmiga

I can't do Los Angeles. I've always been the anti-Barbie. I don't want to be in a place where almost every woman walks around with puffy lips, little noses and breasts large enough to nourish a small country. — Vera Farmiga

I love to be surprised. — Vera Farmiga

Sometimes I attract roles that are necessary either for personal growth or enlightenment. — Vera Farmiga

It's a very different thing, religion and faith. Religion is man-made, it's man-regulated. And faith, you can define God as you wish. But I think they're two different things. — Vera Farmiga

I cannot even imagine college. I'm white-knuckling it just letting my son go to kindergarten for eight hours a day. — Vera Farmiga

Whether you're making a million dollar film or a $100 million film there is never enough money, there's never enough time. — Vera Farmiga

I rely on my directors, a lot. I love being directed. — Vera Farmiga

We are all seekers in some way. There are those of us who think they have all the answers and there are those of us who may never get an answer. — Vera Farmiga

The nature of evil, the nature of it, it exists. It exists and I think within us we have the tools. If we have the will, we can combat it. I think the power is within us and it lies in our own conceptualization of God and positivity and compassion and love. — Vera Farmiga

Patrick sort of had a very pragmatic, practical, Ed-like approach and went down to see. — Vera Farmiga

Working with children is a whole other ball game. They're like little animals. You have to keep the camera turned on them all the time. Sometimes it takes a 41-minute take to get one sentence out in a believable way. — Vera Farmiga

Honestly, I think a good film is spiritual, regardless of whether its subject is faith. — Vera Farmiga

It's terrifying to be the lead. There's a moment of excitement, and then pure terror. — Vera Farmiga

I spent a lot of time reading blogs by mothers who had children with varying degrees of neural dysfunction, from schizophrenia to all sorts of different issues. And honestly, I don't think it's different for anybody. There's no right way to make sure your child will be emotionally and mentally healthier. It's just frustrating. — Vera Farmiga

I bet you could look at every single thing I've ever done and reduce it to that parenting schematic. — Vera Farmiga

There are some times when I think acting can be a noble profession. And when those rare roles come along, like 'Down to the Bone,' you have the opportunity to be of service. — Vera Farmiga

In these times, in this harsh, rude, warring world that we live in, where most of the bloodshed is 'My god is greater than your god,' and we're fighting in the name of our god, we have to find a way to peaceably coexist, spiritually. — Vera Farmiga

I've played a lot of mothers in my movies. — Vera Farmiga

No role is more challenging, rewarding and inspiring than my real-life role as a mom and a wife. — Vera Farmiga

Editing yourself is like an irksome coin toss. You've got to strip yourself of super ego and operate from the id. Maybe I've got my Freud mixed up. It's just hard to trade a beauty shot for the performance with truth and a brightly lit zit. — Vera Farmiga

Yeah, I think it's like any God-given gift. You writers have the gift of perception. If you don't use it, you're going to lose it. And it's the same thing with you [Lorraine], it's God-given. — Vera Farmiga

I look for struggle in the roles I choose - struggle and perseverance. — Vera Farmiga

I've always believed that if you are precise in your thoughts, it's not the lines you say that are important - it's what exists between the lines. What I'm compelled by most is that transparency of thought, what is left unspoken. — Vera Farmiga

I grew up in a Ukrainian Catholic-turned-Christian household, and that is my family's faith. — Vera Farmiga

I bring myself innately to it, yeah. I bring those details as much as I - what I don't obsess over is, there are certain ways I might've pushed it even a little more. For example, [to Warren] your accent. I know Warner Bros. at one point came in. I don't know, until you came to set, I know I wore that long tartan skirt and the ruffled blouse for that. — Vera Farmiga

There's just a deeper level of sophistication in the writing of female characters on TV. — Vera Farmiga

The different tempos and yeah, it's cadence. It's the way she moves through space, it's gestures. — Vera Farmiga

I'm pretty squeaky clean. No big tragedies in my childhood or adolescence or adulthood. I've had a very easygoing, simple life. — Vera Farmiga

Editing is not a part of the filmmaking process I've ever been privy to as an actress. — Vera Farmiga

I think that films about faith made for faith-based communities have a certain tactic. — Vera Farmiga

I'm part wood nymph. I require mountains and warm, dense patches of moss to thrive. — Vera Farmiga

I'm saying that the depth of exploration of the male psyche and the female psyche is uneven. I see further, deeper renderings of what it means to be a man. — Vera Farmiga

I have a lot of frustration with religion, organized religion, because it's man-made, because it's man-regulated. And it has nothing to do with my relationship with God. — Vera Farmiga

I listened more than I asked. There's a lot of information online, so many Youtube videos, countless interviews with all those obvious questions that were all answered for me. I just wanted to absorb her essence. I wanted to see the details, she has such mad style. I just wanted to see - the way she communicates with her hands, these gestures, her smile, how she moves through space. — Vera Farmiga

There's no wrong way to experience a film. — Vera Farmiga

I have tender, romantic associations with upstate New York. — Vera Farmiga

I'm just someone who marvels at God. — Vera Farmiga

It's such a measure of your solidarity with Ed, that when you would give lectures, he would be wearing a tartan tie that matched. And I demanded that outfit, I thought it was so punk - her long skirt, she looked like a Scottish queen, so regal. — Vera Farmiga

Sometimes music helps. If I feel that it's bogus, I'll literally just call myself out on camera and say that it's dishonest. You do whatever it takes. — Vera Farmiga

The fears and anxieties and obsessions wrapped up in being a parent. — Vera Farmiga

I can't get my knickers in a twist about my age and ageing in an industry that caters to the ids of 14-year-olds. — Vera Farmiga

Someone once told me that religion is like a knife: You can stab someone with it, or you can slice bread with it. — Vera Farmiga

You know what's more difficult to do organically? Laughing. It's actually one of the hardest things to do on camera. — Vera Farmiga

I chase after inspiring stories. — Vera Farmiga

I come from a massive family, and the youngest is twentysomething years younger than I am, so I grew up with children. — Vera Farmiga

Do I pray? Yes. Prayer is very important to me. — Vera Farmiga

My personality is just innately even-keeled. I'm not such a huge daredevil. Which is not to say I'm not a passionate woman. I don't know, maybe it's my physiological makeup, but I don't like the feeling of anything in my system, other than a glass of wine now and then. — Vera Farmiga

My husband is my best friend; he knows my sensibilities. — Vera Farmiga

My only real advice to Oscar nominees is, 'If you haven't actually seen a competitor's film, don't fib and say you have and blow smoke up their wahooziewhatsits.' Always best to be frank and tell them the truth. — Vera Farmiga

There really are three types of 'religious' movies: the ones that make fun of it, the ones that vilify it and the ones that literally preach to the converted. — Vera Farmiga

You don't necessarily have to be religious to pray. — Vera Farmiga

I think all religions can agree on certain definitions of God and concepts of God, like God being the god of love, the great 'I am' energy. — Vera Farmiga