I've played lots of strong women in film, in big Hollywood films, and I've sometimes had a hard time in coming to a consensus of what makes a woman strong. What is it that positions her as a force to be reckoned with? And I think it's because there's an expectation from the get-go that she isn't. If you're not starting from a deficit as a point of view, but you're starting from an assumption that says, "Well, this is what women really are," then it's a really freeing experience as an actor and as a woman.

I absolutely refuse the fame part of my business. I refuse even the money side of my business. I try to do as good work as I can do, I try to grow in my art and reach for truth. That's what I want from my art, that's what I aspire to.

You think once you've shown what you can do, and your movies have been successful, that snap, you work. So to discover the difference between guys' roles and girls' roles made me plain mad. It's unjust.

I say no to a lot of things that just don't fit my life. I involve my kids in what I'm struggling with so they don't compete with it.

I'm definitely more attracted to chaos than to order. The point is, I find the female roles out there very cliché. If we are limited to being only lovers or mothers, we are limiting ourselves.

I try to combine my work with my family, that's what I aspire to. I don't say that's the only thing. It's not all work and family, because otherwise you would be saying no to the many other things in life and there are many other things.

If you asked somebody, 'what do you wish for in life?' they wouldn't say 'happiness.' I would have answered 'excitement, knowledge,' God knows - I mean, many, many different things, but certainly not 'happiness'. It seemed like a foreign concept to wish for something that specific and that singular.