Life Lessons from Anjelica Huston

Welcome to Life Lessons. This week, join us as we revisit a few pearls of wisdom from our ’85, ’87, ’91, and ’94 interviews with Anjelica Huston: the actor, model, author, director, producer, and renaissance woman of our hearts. Sit back and relax—you just might learn a thing or two.

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“Rather than go from one life to another life, I think I live a lot of lives at the same time.”

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“It’s the nature of the modern world to label whatever it is that you’re doing. One can’t live a life without falling into a category. What I like to think, and perhaps it is an adolescent thought, is that anything can happen. As long as you think that anything can happen, it will. We’re all allowed to have our dreams.”

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“There’s that intense moment when the first letter hits the page, or when the first brushstroke is make. As an actor, you already have a written word. You have its protection, so that whatever you do within that word, within the framework of the script, is up to you. The writer and painter have to make the initial action.”

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“There’s a certain amount of showoff in me—as there is in anyone who chooses to exhibit themselves in public.”

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“When you meet someone and you look in their eyes it’s like, and if you’ll forgive the comparison, looking into the eyes of a good horse or a good dog. There’s something that you recognize there; there’s a kindness and mutuality that is indescribable, and it may go through many tangential incarnations, but there’s something that ties you to that person.”

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“It’s like… how you recognize your hands. I remember at one point being very young and looking down and saying, ‘These are my hands. These are the hands that will always be.’ As time passes you see different things happening to those hands. I remember at a certain time liking the fact that they were getting bonier. The same thing carries us through mentally. We recognize what we’ve always recognized as being ours or close to us, even though those things go through many elemental changes. We follow our life as we do our hands.”

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“My father had a good expression. He used to say, ‘Remember, honey, you can always put your hands in your pockets and walk away.'”

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“Forgiveness is the only thing that really counts. It’s like any form of pain; you have to live through it and then it becomes a memory. But you have to involve yourself in it and do whatever you can to help yourself, too.”

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“I have this terrible theory that people are like roaches—they adapt to their circumstances.”

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“I’ve done a sort of turnabout on the subject of my nose. There was a long time when I wasn’t especially enamored of my nose. Then I was in a car crash and my nose took all of the impact. I broke it in four places. I realized that if I hadn’t had the nose my entire face would have gone through the windshield, so I had newfound respect for my nose.”

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“I have a fantasy that maybe I’ll be reincarnated on another planet; it isn’t out of the question. I am a searcher; I believe in karma and things coming back to you as you give them out, and I think if the nuns taught me anything, it was that sense of doing to others as you would have them do unto you, because what goes out comes back.”

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“One should never wait for a phone call from a man. I mean, from a man you are interested in.”

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“I don’t pattern my work after anyone. I attempt to seek the truth in what I do, and it has never really occurred to me to pattern my life after anyone.”

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“I hope something will come up that I love; it’s the best way to work—for love. You don’t feel the same when you’re not smitten. It’s a little like life. You can wish you were in love, but you have to wait until the object of your affection knocks on your door.”

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“What you have to remember is that the great feelings come after the terrible ones.”

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