Daily Inspiration Quote by Lara Flynn Boyle

Acting, in Lara Flynn Boyle's framing, is less about belief than about permission: the permission to borrow authority without having to personally endorse every argument that authority makes. The line is candid about the unease baked into playing power. A district attorney isn't just a job title; it's a symbol of the state deciding who counts as innocent, who gets punished, and what "justice" is supposed to feel like. When Boyle admits she may not "always agree with the viewpoint", she punctures the comforting myth that characters are just extensions of the actor's own morals.

The craft move comes in the rescue clause: "I can always tell myself..". That's not a statement of certainty; it's a coping mechanism. She's describing a psychological technique actors use to avoid playing a character as a villain in their own mind. By insisting the DA is "trying to take the moral high ground", she keeps the performance legible and motivated, even when the script asks her to prosecute, posture, or steamroll.

There's also a cultural tell here. Prosecutors on TV often get written as righteous, brisk, almost hygienic about messy human lives - especially in the late-'90s/early-2000s era of prestige crime dramas and courtroom shows that treated conviction as catharsis. Boyle's subtext is that the audience demands moral clarity from the apparatus of law, even when real-world prosecution is riddled with incentives, optics, and collateral damage.

The quote works because it exposes the quiet bargain between actor, role, and viewer: we accept the state's harshness more easily when it's performed as virtue.