I can only hope to be 10 percent of the mom mine was to me. She encouraged me to be confident and enjoy life. That's what I want for my son.

Think bigger than society lets you think. And find mentors. My life is filled with people who knew me when I was 19 and had a horrible South African accent and bleach-blond hair and who believed in me in a way that was brutal. They were just unbelievable and consistent and smart. Find mentors who, every time you're with them, you're being schooled. Just absolutely schooled.

I think writing a book with film in mind is a way to write a really bad books. You can usually tell those books that are packaged to become films.

My mother is one of those very unusual, superb human beings-she's innately strong and incredibly smart. She created an environment for me to explore who I was.

It's pretty impossible to be a South African and not have been personally affected by HIV or AIDS.

I'm interested in human behavior, and what happened in my family life is definitely not a unique story. There are aspects of that I'm sure you can see through the work. But I'm just looking for something that touches me.

You can shave your head, but I've had to gain a lot of weight for movies, I've had to drop weight really fast for movies. I've had to learn accents or embody physical behaviors or twitches and things like that. And sometimes you take to some things easily and sometimes [not]. That's the challenge of the job.