I think male roles are generally much better written. So for actresses, we're always dealing with trying to inject a role with more truth than the writer possibly had in mind.
Erin Gruwell: Your bags are packed and you think the wine will give me a headache?
The writer in movies is about as low as you can get and you really are a hired hand. You are paid a lot of money to be treated like dirt.
If I were running a campaign, I'd urge taking the mountain of money reportedly squandered on pizza, coffee and bagels and spending it more wisely - on a talented young comedy writer.
Success has affected my self-definition in that I have more money. Writers pooh-pooh that idea, but it's a huge deal.
When you're in the States and you're a writer and you've got money and you walk into a bank, you're a bum with money.
Today it's almost impossible to do it unless you are an actress or writer with power... I wouldn't hesitate right this minute to hire a talented woman if the subject matter were right.
The writers of the French enlightenment had deliberately used blasphemy as a weapon, refusing to accept the power of the Church to set limiting points on thought.
France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.
So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry.
I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers, their trying their hand at poetry.
I'm not a writer. I think I can write short stories and poetry, but film writing, brilliant film writing, is a talent - you can't just do it like that.
There are a lot of people in this country who really like my writing. And a lot of writers respect me. But the so-called establishment? They hate me.
Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.
Believe it or not, I worked four summers in college as a sports writer covering baseball for a parks and rec department in Bayonne, N.J.
I'm a long-time fan of Rob Long, and his books are hugely re-readable, detailing the ins and outs of being a Hollywood comedy writer with a past success but with everything to prove.
Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.
I'm completely indifferent to what genre I read provided that I feel sympathy with how a writer perceives being alive in the world.
The first and primary requirement for me in a director that I'd want to work with is: do they love writing, and do they love the collaboration process with writers?
If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer.
I'm definitely one of those actresses who comes to a set knowing how I want to do a scene, and I definitely love input from my directors and my writers.
