Connie Nielsen

If you asked somebody, 'what do you wish for in life?' they wouldn't say 'happiness.' I would have answered 'excitement, knowledge,' God knows - I mean, many, many different things, but certainly not 'happiness'. It seemed like a foreign concept to wish for something that specific and that singular.

I say no to a lot of things that just don't fit my life. I involve my kids in what I'm struggling with so they don't compete with it.

I don't think I can remember a moment in my life where people didn't discuss politics. People discuss politics at the table.

As long as we suspect female actors of being somehow complicit in their own victimization, as willing participants in their own humiliation, we shame the victim and enable the culture of silence that allows predators to act with impunity.

I always look for stories that really try to tell the world that I see, a world that values and is full, in fact, of stories that are important.

We have a certain warped sense of humor in Scandinavia, and that is what comes across in the choices in a lot of our movies.

I believe eating is a form of medicine, a reasoned way of giving your body and mind what it needs.

The act of writing can be a form of release - a confession performs the same action: putting your inner life on the page or into the hands of a trusted person releases tensions and sheds light on what often seems hidden until spoken - or written.

I absolutely refuse the fame part of my business. I refuse even the money side of my business. I try to do as good work as I can do, I try to grow in my art and reach for truth. That's what I want from my art, that's what I aspire to.

I try to combine my work with my family, that's what I aspire to. I don't say that's the only thing. It's not all work and family, because otherwise you would be saying no to the many other things in life and there are many other things.

True strength lies in openness and working in concert with people and events.

I don't think people who are already burdened with social, economic, psychological situations, dysfunctional families, need to be burdened with other people with the same problems.