Melissa Leo
Melissa Leo
Melissa Chessington Leois an American actress. After appearing on several television shows and films in the 1980s, her breakthrough role came in 1993 as Det. Sgt. Kay Howard on the television series Homicide: Life on the Street for the show's first five seasons. She had also previously been a regular on the television shows All My Children and The Young Riders...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth14 September 1960
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I love acting. I really do. I think that's maybe the one thing that is known about me.
An actor has to be very, very careful, as one of the most wonderful props - and actors love props - is a cigarette. There's so much to do with it: you can bring it up to your face, play with the smoke. It's just the greatest - ever since I was 16 and in acting school in England, I've been playing around with cigarettes.
I think this notion of acting and glamour is getting in everybody's way.
Acting is the business of truth, so that we can see ourselves reflected back and learn.
That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it.
Ever since Marilyn Monroe was transformed from one of the prettiest girls you could ever hope to see into an icon, everyone has been trying to repeat that icon. And now the entire industry is filled with, and by and large run by, wannabes.
My body has done for me all these years things I couldn't ever even dreamt to do for characters. It's a tool, molecularly speaking, and I need to take care of it.
To get the hippie out of certain characters is probably the most difficult thing for me. I was not a hippie by choice but by birth.
Well, I don't think of myself as a feminist at all. As soon as we start labeling and categorizing ourselves and others, that's going to shut down the world.
Supporting actors are the support. You can't make a building without support. You can't buy dinner without support.
To play someone when the character masks their own emotions, doesn't understand their own emotions, has no release for their own emotions, and yet is full of emotion - that is a much harder character to play than someone who has somewhere to put it.
Through all of this lovely interviewing, and nice things people say, and the rest of it, I have learned that I am an actor. That is my profession. That is my job. That is how I make a living. So I am just out there making a living.
You know, when I got started on television in the '80s, you would go to the costume department, and if you were a female they put you into a skirt. And you had a pocketbook, usually a shoulder bag.
There were not enough women like Kay on TV and now there are none.