Eventually, if you're the train that's leaving the station, people will race to catch up with you. I think that's one of the things I've figured out. You can't wait for permission to act, you just do; then people are like, "Oh, look at that person just doing over there. Maybe I'll come join them."

The problem is if you play enough of parts in films that are sort of more financial products than anything or films in which the girl is a thankless, thoughtless, underwritten character along the way, you're no longer the person who had something fresh or vital to offer. I think it really does start to diminish some part of you, to put yourself through things you don't really want to be doing.

I never want to repeat the same thing. I always want it to be different from what I've done, and to be not quite sure whether or not I can pull it off, until I hopefully do.

I think we're in this exciting moment of Internet streaming storytelling, and it's anybody's guess what that is or what it means. It can take on any form. That's what's so exciting about the time we're in; these filmmakers are coming in and letting the story tell itself as it wants to be told.

It seems to be this hot-bed for these ideas and bringing these groups together. You find that the one thing that everybody has in common, whether they're a teenager who has run away from his parents, or a divorcee who lost her husband, is that they all have in common this feeling of searching for a meaning in their lives.

People go to the cinema to be moved; they wanna laugh, they wanna cry, they wanna feel something deeply, especially if they're not feeling deeply in their own lives.

Being a waitress can be a very brutal job sometimes, and I remember during the training, the person said to me, "The redder the lips, the better the tips," and that was like the only advice she gave me.