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.

It's always tricky to watch yourself, always. When I first had to watch myself, it was really hard because I'd done quite a few plays and I've never seen myself. So I was professional but I'd never watched myself. So I was like hearing you know... I'm sure you guys are all much more familiar with that because everybody has a phone, and everyone's taking pictures of themselves and making movies of themselves. And so people are more accustomed to it now. So I had to get used to it because there's a lot to be learned, of course, as an actor. When you watch yourself, you learn a lot.

We all perform our lives in a way. And the actor is a perfect metaphor to get at that theme of "how do we find our authentic selves?" And that we all - whether we're actors or not - perform ourselves. As a way of searching. As a way of fumbling around and trying to say, is this my voice? Is this who I am?

We're not all evil or all good, and we all make mistakes to one degree or another.

One of the things on a very practical level as an actor or actress is that when you do a play, you do the entire story every time you do it. You have eight shows a week. You have a rehearsal process of four to five to six weeks. And then once you're in performance, everybody else goes away and you're there with your fellow actors and the audience and the material and your life becomes about that. And you go through the story from the beginning to the end every time you do it and depending on how long you do it, that's where the craft comes in.

We still want to idealize moms, and sometimes we want to idealize actresses who are moms, too. I know that's something I've experienced, but we're all just doing the best we can and we're all trying to raise our kids and talk to them about everything that needs to be discussed.

Movie is a near art form. It's showbiz and people want to make money. And generally people are financing things because they think it will make money whether it's a cable news show, a cable show, or a feature film, or whatever it is. So that's the part of it that drives it, I think, is really the dollar.