Marina Sirtis Quotes
"I was originally cast to be the brains of the Enterprise. Somehow I became The Chick. There's a little ugly girl inside of me going 'Yay! I'm a sex symbol!'"
About her character, Deanna Troi, on Star Trek: "We knew that she ate chocolates and that she worked out but that was really boring. I wanted to know what she did when she went on the holodeck. We basically never saw her off duty or going on holiday. We knew she was a psychologist and a pretty good one but that was all we knew about her."
On being typcast after Star Trek: "I've been getting a lot of science fiction scripts which contained variations on my Star Trek character and I've been turning them down. I strongly feel that the next role I do, I should not be wearing spandex."
About the Star Trek uniforms: "We hate our uniforms. We've said it a gazillion times. It's like a chant that we have to say every day. They're hot, they're uncomfortable, and we can't wait to get out of them. But even when we get to wear something else, it's usually something hot. So I'm in a nice leather jacket in the mountains, on a day when the temperature turns out to be ninety degrees!" (1998)
On her scene in Star Trek Generations where she's piloting the Enterprise: "It was a fascinating sequence. What was funny was that my chair caught fire and burned my bottom. When we did the next take, I stopped in the middle of all the confusion and made sure there was nothing burning on my seat before I sat on it again. I think they had to cut that take out of the movie." (1994)
On Star Trek conventions: "I have the best time. My stand-up material is pretty well set now. The traveling part gets me down, but the actual convention part I still love. I come home after a weekend at a convention, and you have to scrape me off the ceiling. I'm so up and high and full of self-confidence, and I thank the fans for making me feel that way. Sometimes I think I should be paying the fans money to let me be there. I bet they would like that, too. I probably get more out of it than they do." (1994)
"Besides Next Generation, I would have to say that most of my other favorite things that I've done have been theater projects. Playing Ophelia in Hamlet is one of my favorites. Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Magenta in Rocky Horror are my other favorite stage roles."(1994)
"I wasn't a Star Trek fan, yet I knew who all the characters were. That goes to show what an impact the show had, not just in entertainment, but in life. I knew who Chekhov was and I knew who Kirk and Spock were, although I probably had never seen the show. I don't know about the others, but I was a little scared, not so much when we were filming but when it came time for the first show to go on the air. We were being scrutinized so closely, especially by the press, and by the fans who were not happy about there being a new show at all. They were quite happy watching their re-runs of the original Star Trek and were quite miffed that we were trying to replace their idols. So I felt like I was jumping into an abyss sometimes."
"What they told us about The Next Generation when we first started was that we were guaranteed twenty-six episodes. So that was the longest job I've ever had. And that was basically it - we didn't know what the premise of the show was going to be and we waited, week by week, to see a script. We knew that we weren't going to be taking over from the original cast, that it was going to be a whole new entity, but that was it. I remember I went to I went to see Gene Rodenberry to ask him about my character, about her background and things like that. I'd done a history for her; her likes, dislikes, upbringing, things like that. And he just said, 'Yeah, yeah, that's fine,'. I don't know if it was that he wasn't interested or whether I'd hit the nail on the head. But that was it. I don't think they told us much about it, at all."
On the series finale of
Star Trek: Enterprise: "These Are The Voyages..." was a good episode, but not a great finale. They should've done a two-hour, you know, like we did. Then I would've gotten double the money, that would've been good" (August 20, 2005).
About her role in _Crash (2004)_ : "I don't want to get any letters or postings on my web site about how bad I look in this movie."
About her role in
Spectres: "It was the first time really that I got to be a mom, and I thought it was about time really because I really am old enough to be someones mom. It was just a little bit of a shock going from never having been a mom to being a mom of a teenager. There was no kind of toddler stage for me, you know, mom of toddler, or mom of baby." (2004 interview, Spectres DVD)
On the sets of Star Trek: "When we ever had problems with potentially dangerous or unhealthy conditions on the set, Patrick (Stewart) was the first to complain. He went to SAG and made sure people came out and tested for toxins when the smoke machine was used." (2003)
Her thoughts on why
Star Trek: Nemesis failed at the box office: ""I think the fans want to see the whole team in action, while that was very much Picard taking center stage. Also, I didn't think Tom [Hardy] was at all convincing as a young Patrick [Stewart]. Don't get me wrong - he's a great, great actor and a really lovely guy. But he didn't look a bit like Patrick at all. They should have cast
James Marsters. They auditioned him, you know. I think physically he was much more suitable for the part" (SFX magazine, Sept/2006).
"I'd be happy if I was still playing her [Troi] now. No really. Being on Next Generation was the best experience of my life." (SFX magazine, Sept/2006)
Her thoughts on how fans hated the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise: "It wasn't so much the fans as the cast. They were all lovely to work with on the set. Although, I did hear they weren't at all happy with their show ending with what was essentially an episode of The Next Generation." (SFX magazine, Sept/2006)
About the
Star Trek: The Next Generation episode 'Genesis': "I was sitting in a cold bath, all latex-ed up as a lizard or something, thinking; 'They really don't pay me enough for this!'" (SFX magazine, Sept/2006).
