Allison Janney

“I did Alan Ball's 'Five Women Wearing the Same Dress,' and then he put me in 'American Beauty.' Everything started to happen from all the years I put into the theater in New York City, and w...”

“The way you talk to yourself sometimes is terrible! I hear myself, and I go, 'I can't believe you're talking to my friend Allison like that!' It's really terrible, the things we say to ourse...”

“One out of forty American men wears women's clothing. We've had more than forty presidents. One of these guys has been dancing around the Oval Office in a prom dress.”

“The real trick to auditioning is just letting go of trying to please them. Make it your own. That took me a long time to learn.”

“I hate auditioning so much.”

“I've always been a figure skater and ballet dancer. I love physical comedy, and any chance that I get to do that... that is so me.”

“My dream is to have a creativity barn, in my back yard, which is full of musical instruments and every kind of paint and oils and paper, and you can just go in and make something.”

“I was a late bloomer in a lot of areas in life.”

“I love arts and crafts.”

“Every character I do has a bit of my mum in her. She's like the doyenne of Dayton, Ohio.”

“It is a very difficult job, being the servant of two masters.”

“Politics scared the crap out of me because I didn't grow up in a family where we talked about anything, really, except, 'Pass the peas, and do this.'... We didn't really have political discu...”

“I have the power of my height. Growing up, it was a total drawback. There was nothing good about it at all.”

“I definitely paid my dues, and I'm grateful for everything and for my good friends.”

“It's a great way to start the day, hearing you've been nominated for an Emmy. It's just thrilling.”

“Someone said I wasn't attractive enough. People say those things, but they make you stronger. Then you can win an Emmy and think, ha, ha, ha.”

“The first job where I actually made money was on 'Guiding Light,' the soap opera. And I played a maid. My name was Ginger, and I had a Brooklyn accent - a really bad one, if I remember corre...”

“The only guilty pleasure I have is pasta.”

“I'm a big girl, but I have a delicate constitution emotionally. If I've been humiliated in some audition, I just cry all the way home and think, 'Oh my God, I suck.'”

“I was playing 40-year-old women when I was 20. I didn't get considered for ingenue roles.”