Emmy Rossum Quotes

1. I was trained operatically, and then I veered off and became an actress when I kind of grew out of children's costumes there.


2. The truth is, I probably didn't want to be friends with some of those girls (from prep school), because I found that a lot of their values were a little specious. Now, of course, all those girls are calling me and being like: "We should have lunch!" and I'm like: "Um…don't you remember how you didn't like me that much?"

3. I think all the mistakes I have made in my life are when I didn't listen to my inner child.




4. It wasn't my intention in going after this part but I suppose now I do. The adult roles are a lot meatier - you're not always just the daughter or the girlfriend or whatever.

5. Music is also a part of who I am so I'm thinking about recording an album.

6. I was definitely a creative geek. I was short and kind of pudgy, no one believes that, but it's true. I loved music and I loved musicals and I just walked around singing all the time and pretending to play drums on my desk. I think that's why my second grade teacher sent me to audition for the opera. She was like: "You have way too much energy, you can not sit still in the classroom." But, I was kind of a kiss ass to my teacher. I always wanted to be perfect when I was younger.

7. People who take risks like Amy Winehouse and Norah Jones take a second to catch on, but eventually they do because they're different and honest in a musical landscape that's not always like that.



8. I think of all my roles, I was best in "Genius." 

9. I think I'm sassy. But my parents taught me to be a very kind person, to be compassionate...At Spence, one of my friends was a girl who was handicapped. And I have a friend who had a craniofacial deformity. That's not something that frightens me. So, I'm sassy.

10. I'm heavy on preparation…Some actors come to the set and don't know what scene they're playing, but that would make me crazy. It's not about control but perfectionism - my biggest vice and one of my biggest assets.

11. I've never had my brows done - I tweeze them myself. I used to watch my mom pluck her brows, that's how I learned.



12. She's lonely and wounded and very vulnerable and it really is a story about people at the heart of it all.

13. There's something safe about playing a character, but then it's like: "Who am I underneath it all?"






14. I'm convinced wearing those corsets for 14 hours at a time deformed me for life. I was 16 years old and still growing at the time of the shooting. I could barely breathe, and with Christine's intense emotions I hyperventilated and almost passed out. I think her name is Christine for a reason. She is Christ-like.

15. Guys usually like a very natural look. I think it's bad idea to wear a strong lip on a first date - or for the first few dates. I'm always too nervous he'll kiss it off - if I'm lucky enough to get a kiss! I also think soft, sexy hair is important.

16. Here we spent so much time together - eight months of our lives almost - and it was so great because we all got so close and that really made us not afraid to improve with each other.

17. (about kissing Patrick Wilson in "Τhe Phantom of The Opera" 2004) In this one scene, it took three days to shoot and it's the scene where my character passionately kisses her fiancé for the first time. It was so complex with the snow coming down that it took three days to shoot. By the end of the three days I'd kissed him so much that my lips had swollen up - so much that I had to use an ice pack in between takes. Hardship, I know!

18. Too many times you come across lyrics that sound like you've heard them before or you can't really relate to them. And I think that I write songs that sound fresh and sensual in kind of a layered, lush way. But I also think that they are real, and that's why I wanted to call the record "Inside Out."

19. I can put my legs behind my head and sing "Happy Birthday." Because that's something that me and my friends used to do when we were in gymnastics class as kids, and I can still do it. I was doing it since I was 8 and 9. They used to call me Gumby. Very bendy.

20. I feel like I've come out of this grown up, maybe because I live through the character vicariously and she grows up so much during the course of this story.




21. Being yourself is one of the hardest things because it's scary. You always wonder whether you'll be accepted for who you really are. I decided to call my record "Inside Out" because that's my motto about life. I don't think you ever succeed at trying to be anyone else but who you truly are.

22. I like René Descartes' theory about a ball of wax. You can change its form from solid to liquid, but it's still the same ball of wax. With acting, you are the same person in a different form. You can only be what you know, and you only truly know yourself.

23. I hope that I'm sexy in a different kind of way than I think that a lot of girls are right now. I think a lot of girls in the public eye, especially musical artists, are just kind of objectified a little bit and wearing super-skimpy outfits and leaving nothing to the imagination.

24. Everyone messes up in relationships and has peaks and valleys in their personal lives. When I realized it wasn't the end of the world and I would keep on standing, I knew it was going to be OK.

25. Sean Penn and Clint Eastwood have told me that I shouldn't feel that I need to be in the limelight or the spotlight all the time. A career is about longevity, as shown in their careers. So, I really want to only do the best things and work with the best people. That's what I strive to do.

26. When I was in school, I got there on the first day and everyone had long, blonde, straight hair, and I had short, dark, curly hair. I immediately felt I didn't fit in and started growing my hair. But I've learned that I'm only happy when I am truly me and feel comfortable and confident in myself.

27. I never walk into the studio and say, I'm going to write a song called…"X" or called "Slow Me Down." I write a ton of lyrics, often the title is somewhere in those 10 pages of…I call it brain vomit. It's kind of like whatever comes out of my head and I'm unabashedly just writing it down.



28. I'm on a TV show, which I'm so lucky to be on. It pays my rent, so I don't need to make a ton of money on music, and music has always been my first love. I'm not in this business for fame or money. That's something I learned from being a kid at the Met. The kids weren't unionized. We made 25 bucks a night and there were horses onstage - no joke - that were making $800. So when you're valued, at least monetarily, less than a farm animal, you realize you're there because you really love it.

29. (on her audition with Andrew Lloyd Webber for The Phantom of The Opera 2004) He had the most magnificent apartment I had ever seen and I was floored by it. I went in and started vocalizing with the accompanist and Andrew walked in as we were preparing. He didn't say hello, didn't introduce himself, and just sat down in front of me and said: "Shall we?" I thought to myself it was my one shot so I had better just stand up and do it, so I didn't introduce myself, I nodded to the accompanist and I did the two biggest numbers in the show. Then he stood up and said: "That was great. I'm Andrew."

30. It's the best feeling when you wake up and it's warm and cozy, and you don't have to go to work.





31. I've never had siblings, I didn't grow up in a big family; it was just me and my single mom. And hectic family dysfunction was actually something that I craved.

32. I don't really live my life in the media spotlight. People don't know that much really about me or what I think.

33. I'd say that my musical influences are anywhere from pop-rock electronica, new age and classical. But I think that specifically, bands - I love Jem, I love Sigur Ross, I love David Gray, I love Elliot Smith…a lot of different people. But I don't find lyrical inspiration from anybody.

34. (on if it it's a part of her career strategy to not be typecast as "a young hottie starlet") Actually don't think I have a strategy. I think in terms of instinct, if in my gut it feels like the right character, if I feel it's a story that needs to be told. Of course in retrospect it was an excellent idea to go do something that was not glamorous, because I think people did see me as princess-y after "Τhe Phantom of The Opera" (2004) and "Poseidon" (2006) and big-budget movies. Looking back on it, if it was a strategy it would have been a really good one. It happened that I ended up emotionally attaching to a character that I was the right age for when they were casting it. This show ("Shameless" 2011) had also been around for a couple of years. There was another incarnation of it at HBO with Woody Harrelson in the William H. Macy role, so I wouldn't have been the right age for it at that time. So much of Hollywood is luck.

35. I had classical training but I don't consider myself an opera singer though.


36. (regarding her visit to a psychic who told her some accurate things about her late grandmother) I'm a very rational person but I pray every day.


37. I think we're all a lot more like our parents than we want to admit.

38. This is a time in the United States when young people have the ability to follow their dreams and to be influential in a way that they have never been, in any other era in history in any other country.

39. I have this thing that I've invented with wardrobe and makeup that I like to call the "vag pad". It's a strip of rubbery stuff that gets adhered to me.

40. (on if it appealed to her that the character of Fiona in "Shameless" (2011) is not glamorous) Yes, it did appeal to me to have a character who isn't in the least vain. As an actor, your own personal vanity can be a massive pitfall in terms of making a character believable. I feel more in this character to have my shoulders hunched and be in tattered clothes and have my hair knotted than I do when I'm dolled up.

41. If I can't find a project that I'm really interested in, I'll just go back to college where I've been studying art history and French. I'm also going to study English and philosophy - the whole curriculum!

42. It is very grand and sumptuous and awesome to look at but it was really about the characters for me.


What do you think of Emmy Rossum's quotes?


Feel free to comment and share this blog post if you find it interesting!