I had a lovely experience once in Africa working with the U.N. when a president of a country met me about refugee issues and said ‘What do you do?’ I said ‘I‘m an actor.’ He replied ‘I heard that was a very difficult job and might not be the smartest job to do.’ It was lovely.

Every character is a part of you and a part of the character that you are going to evolve into that you are not yet.

It's hard no to work, so I find a way to put myself back to work. And I think it's important, in between projects, for me to sit down with who I've just become and allow her to continue to evolve and find a home inside me before I go and become somebody else. But I think I also need to learn to relax and not prepare too much, just enjoy life. I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don't have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

If you have enough people sitting around telling you you're wonderful, then you start believing you're fabulous, then someone tells you you stink and you believe that too!

Because I am a bad girl, people always automatically think that I am a bad girl. Or that I carry a dark secret with me or that I'm obsessed with death. The truth is that I am probably the least morbid person one can meet. If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

Like most people, you listen to yourself on the phone or an answering machine and you're like, 'Ugh.' So to do something with just your voice is hard.

Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.