My mothers into frilly dresses and eyelashes and hairstyles from the 1970s. We always argue about that.

As a Goodwill Ambassador for YouthAIDS, I've learned that the face of AIDS is increasingly young and female. By educating young people and empowering them to make the right choices we can stop the spread of HIV/AIDS

Daily meditation keeps me sane. I memorize prayers or poems that express my highest spiritual ideals, and quietly, word for word, go through the prayer first thing in the morning. Julian of Norwich or St. Francis or the compassionate Buddha. It's called passage meditation. You internalize the perennial philosophies.

Ruby in Paradise and the intensity and quality that I was able to experience on Smoke were equally as important to me as working on this movie every day for three-and-a-half months.

I think that [Obama] is a powerful leader. I think he’s a brilliant man. I think that he has an incredible devotion to our constitution, and that he is now able to flower more as the president I knew he could be.

When I was working on Eye of the Beholder, I played a character who is so aloof that my whole lifestyle became very aloof. If someone knocked on my door, there was a part of me that went into a rage, because I wanted to be isolated and alone.

My first big acting performance was in the Marilyn Monroe biography piece, and it required frontal nudity. I talked to Mira Sorvino, my co-star, about how nervous I was because I didn't know how my mom would react. She said, 'Can I be completely honest with you? I've seen your mom in interviews, and she seems pretty screwed up. I don't think there's much you could do to shock a broad like that.' And from that moment on it was big nipples to the wind!