Rachel Weisz

I was advised by an American agent when I was about 19 to change my surname.

If I went out in killer heels and full makeup, blow dry, the whole thing – anyone dressed up like that could be intimidating to men and women, really. It’s so, look at me. Do you know what I mean? But I love women.

The celebrity thing… I don’t want to sound as if I absolutely don’t want it because that’s not true. If you’re in the entertainment business, you have to be honest. There’s something alluring about it…

I’ve known Daniel since I was 22. We did a play together in London many years ago.

[on her parents] They’re very harsh critics and they’ve often said to me: “That was shit, you were crap’, but this is the first time (after he saw her as “Amy Foster” on Swept from the Sea) my father said to me: ‘I think one day you’ll be a good actress”!

I don’t want to wear high heels because I can’t run around with my son. So, for real life, I like to be in jeans and nice-cut shirts. I appreciate good tailoring.

We all have a childhood dream that when there is love, everything goes like silk, but the reality is that marriage requires a lot of compromise.

It’s nice to always make an effort when you get photographed.

A designer told me that my wife was a master of light and I was a master of time.

This is what I tell young women who ask me for career advice. People are going to try to trick you. To make you feel that you are in competition with one another. “You’re up for a promotion. If they go for a woman, it’ll be between you and Barbara.” Don’t be fooled. You’re not in competition with other women. You’re in competition with everyone.

Sometimes I think, ‘To hell with acting,’ and then I realize I could be working at a shoe shop, acting is much cooler.

There is no doubt about precisely when folks began racing each other in automobiles. It was the day they built the second automobile.

I love old music, old movies, screwball comedies, vintage clothes and basically I’m an old-fashioned gal.

There aren’t any hard women, only soft men.

I was asked to come to Chicago because Chicago is one of our fifty-two states.

I did (training in) tennis, ballet, swing dancing, piano, art class and etiquette. I also did French dialect, but then it was mixing me up with my Southern dialect, so we stuck to Southern!

After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that’s where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.

We’re all comedy fans in my family. My parents mainly wouldn’t let me watch stuff that was either annoying to them, or just garbage. My dad wouldn’t let us watch ‘The Flintstones’ if he was home, because he said it was a rip-off of ‘The Honeymooners’. But he would let us stay up really late in the summer and watch old ‘Honeymooners’.

[on choosing films she will be in] I have a weird process, but the main thing is like this: I hear her voice in my head. There are a lot of wonderful scripts my agents can’t believe I pass on, but I do because I can’t hear the voice. It doesn’t appeal to me then. I’m really careful. Unless I hear the voice, I can’t do it.

Well, I speak for my show only when I say we’re in debt to journalists because we’re just pulling clips all day long which they made in the first place. We know that a lot of people watching our show haven’t been watching the news as closely as we have – they haven’t been following hundreds of reporters on Twitter all day. So I guess our goal is to say: ‘Hey, here’s what happened today in 10 minutes, and hopefully we’ll tell you in a way that won’t make you throw your remote at the television’.

NASCAR will make this decision strictly on the greenery, OK? They’ve got no loyalty to one place or another place [as if North Wilkesboro, Rockingham and Darlington need reminding]. They’ve got loyalty to money. And I don’t blame them. I’d do the same thing.