Lili Taylor (Actor)

"I'll do interviews and photo sessions, but I don't like them and I don't need them. People recognizing me is OK, because they don't quite know how to place me; they think I'm, like, a neighbor or something. It's not like, Oh, a STAR! My films have been low-budget, and when there's not a lot of money, there's a spirit and a will to it. When you have a lot of money involved, the pressure is so immense that it kills that spirit. But if there's a great film that could make money and have integrity, yeah, I'd do it! I haven't seen one of those yet. My agent knows not to even send me on things that are one dimensional or stupid. People say, 'you've gotta work, you've been out of it too long.' It's OK. There's no rush." - Taylor quoted in Movieline, March 1993

"I'm not a social worker. I'm an artist, and that's what I do. So the question I keep asking myself is, within what I do, what can I do?" - Taylor to Interview magazine, May 2006

"The main thing I try to do is listen. Not just listening to the script, but listening to the character. I let the character guide me, she'll tell me what to do. A lot of times I'll just close my eyes and watch her do things. I don't know what the hell the scene's about, and she'll just take me through it." - Taylor quoted in Out, August 1999

About the state of independent films: "They're not really independents anymore. Budgets are higher. The revovling doors in theaters move faster so they're not as apt to keep small films and let them get good word of mouth. The director has to get a name actor and follow the dictates of the money people, and it's not that independent." - Taylor to the The Los Angles Times, Jan. 25, 1998

On the difficulty women have getting good film roles: "Generally speaking, we've got a ways to go in that department because the imbalance is so old. We're dealing with thousands of years. I do feel the movie industry is a really interesting microcosm of the problem. For a long time there's been double the amount of roles for men as women. And we earn much less than men do. When the independents were purer and didn't make so much money, they could take more risks, especially in the kinds of women they could show. But when there's a biger budget there's more of a formula, and the women fit into that formula in a very specific way. Usually a complicated woman is not part of it." - Taylor quoted in Interview, January 1999

Taylor has long hoped to play Janis Joplin in a film directed by Nancy Savoca, but the project remains on hold.

Taylor was a member of NYC's Naked Angels before forming her own theater company, Machine Full, c. 1993. She made her directing debut at the helm of Machine Full's production of "Halcyon Days".