There's always that key to every character that lets you go to those places you need to go to. No matter how much you might hate the character, it makes you understand it.

Jessica Tandy. Nice company! And Ruth Gordon. They worked all along. She didn't really get any big star recognition until Driving Miss Daisy. So what if it takes me that long? Slow and steady wins the race, right? Better a tortoise than a hare.

I never have broken up in comedy, ever. There's something about me that I just don't break on camera - maybe because I'm just so cheap, and I know how expensive it is to shoot - but I broke on Sordid Lives, and I broke on The Office. Those are the only two times in my life.

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

Milton Katselas said, "Who are you to look down your nose at Anna Magnani and Maureen Stapleton? Who do you think you are?" I was doing this kooky meditation at the time called inner-guide meditation, where you go into a cave and you have a guide, and you fly around. So I said to my inner guide, "Take me to the energy that's blocking me from accepting my casting" - because I understood it intellectually, but I didn't want to do it in my heart.

I didn't understand Southland Tales script at all! Is there a single word to describe it? Cacophony? It's celebrity meets pornography meets politics - it's unlike anything I've ever seen in my life. And slapstick humor, communism; I mean, what doesn't it have? It's crazy. I didn't go to Cannes, but I guess the first cut was three and a half hours or something?

I built a career on my archetype, and I'm grateful, but I'm trying to stretch.