Liv Johanne Ullmann (born 16 December 1938) is a Norwegian actress and film director. She is known as one of the "muses" of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman.
It is only the untalented director who imagines him or herself in every part, wants his or her own thoughts and emotions portrayed; it is only the untalented who make their own limitations those of the actors as well.
Nothing ever comes to an end. Wherever one has sunk roots that emanate from one's best or truest self, one will always find a home.
I realize that we've come to a different way of showing movies. But I'm still with the old ways, and I can't change.
it is only in statistics that people die by the millions. Each person dies individually, in his own predicament.
Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool.
Nobody is one block of harmony. We are all afraid of something, or feel limited in something. We all need somebody to talk to. It would be good if we talked to each other, not just pitter patter but real talk. We shouldn't be afraid, because most people really like this contact; that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable too. It's so much easier to be together when we drop our masks.
We need feminist voices today, you know. In my time, we had incredible feminist voices and I'm sure we have it today, too, but in all the massive outlets, maybe the one or two or three voices are somehow disappearing.
Film is wonderful as opposed to theater, because it will always live there, and they will always be seen.
Soon I will be an old, white-haired lady, into whose lap someone places a baby, saying, "Smile, Grandma!" - I, who myself so recently was photographed on my grandmother's lap.
Ibsen was Norwegian by birth, but universal in spirit.
August Strindberg gave me the opportunity to have this incredible story [Miss Julie ], about the class system, about unfairness in life, but also this story about man and woman. What I wanted, because he gave me the freedom, to give her a voice that I missed a little in her.
I believe that it is sometimes less difficult to wake up and feel that I am alone when I really am, than to wake up with someone else and be lonely.
There is a difference between film and digital. Because digital, you know, it's perfect and whatever. But with film, you get depth. You get subject.
We who are alive at this moment are only an infinitesimal part of something that has existed for eternity and will continue when there is no longer anything to show that earth existed. Still, we must feel and believe that we are all.
We are equal human beings, and we were born with evil and anger and misunderstanding of what a man is, and so we are as needy and wanting to be part of him, as he, obviously, was needing and wanting to be part of us. And that's why I've really taken the freedom, because it's an adaptation, to give her a voice.
Choice is the essence of what I believe it is to be human.
The fear inside of loneliness: That only what others have is real.
The best thing that can come with success is the knowledge that it is nothing to long for.
I think of all the choices I never knew. And those I let be made for me - to please, from fear, for love. Where did they disappear to, those choices that I never made? They are all part of who I am. They are the legacy I leave behind, they are the finished portrait of myself I cannot change.
The void Papa's death left in me became a kind of cavity, into which later experiences were to be laid.