A good writer - and I think it's this way with actors too - even if you have two lines, you have to do the same complete work as if you're number one on the call sheet. If you get in an elevator and somebody gets on, rides two floors and gets off, that person has a reality that goes back to when they were born. They have memories, they have people, they have a life. They are doing something right now that the camera is on them in their space. We live in our own close-up all the time.

I was like, wait a minute. When I hear my sisters' names, I want to have a joyful feeling in my heart about it.

Americans have a hard time writing moms. I'll get a script and everything's really great and well-drawn, but the mom is like stock footage, they go and get that out. They plug it in, this idea of "mother." You could lift moms out of any script, no matter what the culture, what the neighborhood, what the economic status, and you could switch them around, and they'd be the same person. I think it's because most people don't really have a human idea, a specific life that they attach to who their mother was. Their mother was there for them, so it either gets deified, or the opposite.

I think people need to understand that with plays and with cinema, when you hear about it, call and get a ticket then or go and see it then. It's especially with the play, which I can do because it's a limited run.

People live a lot freer in their body and their voices and their moves than people act onscreen.

Once our storyline gets under way, I just hope people don't throw cabbages at me in the market.

I am not getting any younger and am taking a new approach to life.