I've always been pretty levelheaded. In show business you need to have a certain internal stability.

I remember hearing someone say that good acting is more about taking off a mask than putting one on, and in movie acting, certainly that's true. With the camera so close, you can see right down into your soul, hopefully. So being able to do that in a way is terrifying, and in another way, truly liberating. And I like that about it.

Once I get on something, once I have something that I'm working on, then I become very obsessive. In a good way. I mean,... is there a positive way to say obsessive? It's a good thing and if you're out there and you're working on something right now and you're crazed and you're up in the middle of the night, or you can't stop thinking about it, or you have to keep reading other things about the subject that you're working on or whatever. That's good and I think that's necessary creatively.

Maybe that's one of the virtues of the 2016 election that we're going through is all of this racism and xenophobia and sexism and whatever else you want to say is being exposed, maybe that's a blessing. I'm trying to look at the positive side of what's been happening in our country, which is frightening.

I don't see myself as competing with other actresses. I mean, I went through a time when I was in New York, and I was going to lots of auditions and trying to get parts, but even then, you're not really competing with the other actresses. There is a competition going on, but it's not like something you can win in that way.

You have to learn to deal with your own, for want of a better word, insecurities, fears. They don't go away. And that's normal. It's human. You don't ever really want to lose that. What you want to do is learn to manage it and to work with yourself. But there's a part of you that has anticipation and fear. And so the important thing to know is that there's nothing wrong with that and that that's normal. You have to learn how to deal with it, certainly, but it doesn't keep you from doing it. And that doesn't go away ever.

In a film, if you can capture what's going on underneath, you can begin to make a connection between the character and the people watching it.