I was so frustrated with my whole life that I walked up this hilltop and screamed at the heavens. It was very dramatic - but then again, I am an actress - and I said, "Fine! I'll be a character actress! Just tell me what you want me to do!" I was so angry at the universe.

Patrick Swayze had done The Outsiders already - he was certainly the star of our class - and for a big, sexy, horseback-ridin' Texan to come over and tell me that I'm beautiful, and look me right in the eye and make me accept that there's a beauty in the characters I play meant so much to me.

I'm ready to do some classics. Maybe I wasn't in the beginning. I weighed 179 pounds when I got to New York, and I had that thick Southern accent. I still talk Southern, but I can do without it.

I like the line leading up to that: "I made your daughter the lead dancer, and you're not committed!" It's how people in their own little narrow worlds get so bent out of shape over the silliest things. I've seen it all my life, especially growing up in the South - the tempest in a teapot.

As much as I love being an artist, I love being a mom even more.

It was probably 10 at night when I started to read Donnie Darko. I get in bed and read the first page, and I go, "Hmmm. That's interesting." Second page, "Wow." By the fourth page, my heart started to beat, and I knew. It makes me cry, because I knew I had found a classic film. You just know when you get certain material.

The book by William Goldman, Adventures In The Screen Trade, great, awesome book. He talks about this very thing - that you can't get a star to do a part that's not what their public expects. And Sandy's Bullock not like that. She's taken a lot of chances over the years. And Patrick Swayze certainly wasn't like that. But I mean, maybe that is true. Maybe that's exactly why they didn't like All About Steve.