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 love Maude Pearson character from Agel. I love that she walls her son up because he has a girlfriend! In fact, I have that clip on my reel - her walling him up and saying, "What are you going to do about that streetwalker now? You belong to me! What are you going to do?" And did you know the ghost mom has her own Angel trading card?

Patrick Swayze was in an acting class with me. We were working on Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf together, and there was this beautiful blonde who was playing Honey - and I'm playing loudmouthed Martha - and she was so gorgeous, and the two guys were flirting and having fun with her, and so I started crying. Buddy came over and said, "Don't you know that you're beautiful? Don't you know that these women are beautiful?" It meant so much to me, because he was already sort of a star.

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.

Patrick Swayze was risk-taking - because he not only did a transvestite, but in Donnie Darko, he played a pedophile! Talk about a risky thing for a movie star, and he jumped right in. We even shot some of those video sequences of his character out on his ranch. I mean, he opened his heart and his ranch to us. He was just an awesome guy.

I love to take chances. I love first-time directors. I love super-low-budget movies. I've done 80-something movies, and I want to just keep experimenting. First-time directors have new, fresh ideas, and lot of times they're risking a lot to do it, so it means so much to them. They're not just hired; they have their heart on the line, because if you've gone that far, you're probably a very passionate person.

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.