Susan Sarandon (Actor)

"I am a very ordinary person who just happens to be in an extraordinary position. I can garner the media attention that these causes so desperately need, and frankly, it's a good use of my time. But I don't put in even part of the hours that the people who run these organizations, day in and day out. Those are the real heroes we should be honoring." - Susan Sarandon in Daily Variety, March 10, 1998

"I think what makes a person sexy at any age is that they seem like they're saying yes to life, however that manifests itself." - Sarandon to Diane Sawyer for "Primetime" (ABC), Sep. 22, 2004

"I've started to go to the gym for the first time in years. I worry about keeping my strength up. I don't mind lines and wrinkles, but I'm not happy if I start to look kind of droopy. I've read that by the time you get into your 70s you've kind of moved beyond gender and just become a force. You're beyond the expectations and limitations that gender throws upon you. If I could end up like Melina Mercouri or Jeanne Moreau, where you can still see that fire, that would be fine." - Sarandon to Premiere, January 1996

"The gift of acting is just numerous incarnations. Forget about walking in somebody else's moccasins. You're in their house. You're in their clothes. You're in their head. You're in their lives. When you do that it can all be reduced to what do people need? They want to be loved, they're afraid of dying, they want to reach out." - Susan Sarandon on acting to Paul Fischer of Cranky Critic, 2002

"Well, I was always political. I was arrested in high school for Vietnam and civil rights protests and all kinds of things. When I was little, I would always make sure that my dolls alternated their clothes, I didn't want one to always be dressed nicer than the other." - Sarandon to Premiere, January 1996

"Yes, in hindsight I'm proud of myself that I took an absolutely humiliating experience and turned it into a fairly decent performance. I was given my role very shortly before we began shooting. I learned a lot from 'Witches of Eastwick,' more to do with life lessons than acting. I learned a lot about the business, I learned a lot about blaming yourself for being taken advantage of, and how destructive that can be. And then I worked with [director] George Miller again, so what can I say?" - Susan Sarandon speaking about her experience on "The Witches of Eastwick" in Movieline, January-February 1995

About attracting negative press at the 1992 Academy Awards ceremony when she spoke out about the plight of HIV-positive Haitian refugees incarcerated by the US government at Guantanamo Bay: "Those people were so desperate that they were on a hunger strike. Most of them were very ill and they were choosing to die rather than live under the conditions that Amnesty International had already said were completely inhuman. Nothing was being done. It was my tax money keeping them there, so if it meant going on the air at a widely-publicized event and for 26 seconds drawing attention to it, and getting them out the next day, I have no regrets, absolutely."

Sarandon makes it clear that disrupting the Oscar ceremony did not come easliy to her. "I was raised a good Catholic girl, and you don't make waves. You smile, and you keep the conversation going, and you try to make everything go smoothly. I just felt there was no other choice. And the fact of the matter was, it worked. The last thing you want to do is to end up in a situation like in the 50s, where people were afraid to open their mouths. The right to speak out is what's great about this country." - Susan Sarandon, The Hollywood Reporter SHOWEST Talent Special Issue, March 12, 1998