Success Quote by Sarah Polley

Polley’s line lands like a quiet demotion of ego, and that’s precisely why it feels bracing in an industry trained to sell importance. She insists that a movie should try to mean something, even at the risk of embarrassment. That “even if it fails miserably” isn’t self-deprecation for charm; it’s a jab at the safer sin of saying nothing at all. Failure, in her framing, becomes evidence of ambition rather than incompetence.

The second sentence is the real pivot: a measured surrender of the savior fantasy that shadows a lot of “serious” acting. Polley came up in a period when socially conscious cinema was often marketed as activism-by-proxy, with performers positioned as moral megaphones. Her admission that she’s “given up” on changing the world isn’t cynicism so much as professional clarity. It draws a boundary between impact and control: films can spark conversations, but they’re not policy, and an actor’s choices aren’t a guaranteed lever on history.

Subtextually, she’s also negotiating the weird burden placed on women in public life to be both talented and exemplary. The quote argues for a middle path: keep the standard (attempt meaning), drop the messianic expectation (one film, one role, one person fixing everything). It’s a mature creative ethic: make work that aims, accept that it may miss, and refuse the marketing lie that art’s value depends on immediate, measurable world change.