Ellen Barkin Quotes

I don’t want to be a mentor in my bedroom.

My husband thinks he’s compromising if we have one cook instead of three.

There’s no slow build anymore where you get a little part, then you get a little better part, then a better part, until one day your agent calls you us and says, ‘guess what, you’re a movie star,’ and you say, ‘Thank you!’

I guess I worry about weird existential things, like how do we spend our final act. This is a very emotional question. I can’t answer it without crying. I think, You’re 56 years old, what did you do? You raised two good kids. What am I going to do now that is as meaningful as that? I don’t know the answer yet.

It’s no stretch to picture me standing next to Al Pacino or Robert De Niro. Those are ethnic New York men. I’m an ethnic New York girl. Everybody has their limitations. I mean, I should never be cast as Queen Elizabeth.

I have skinny genes. My mother weighs 90 pounds.

I’m tenacious, I think – I know – and I do also have a quality where if you tell me I can’t do something, if I know I can’t do it I’m the first to raise my hand and say, I can’t do that. But there is a big Bronx, New York Jew in me that just says, Really? Really? You think I – yes, I can. I can do it. I can do it.

I would love to do a television show in New York City.

When a 12-year-old, a 13-year-old, so desperately wants a baby what she’s looking for is the kind of unconditional love a child gives a mother and a mother gives a child.

I am to a fault an introspective person. But I am not a reflective person – except for a big mistake, and then I really think about it.

I guess if you’re lucky enough not to have to pay your rent, then you or I take much more seriously the kind of work that I do, what it takes for me to leave two teenagers of my own and six stepchildren and a husband and four grandchildren.

My nickname was Skinabo – skin and bones.