We have a certain warped sense of humor in Scandinavia, and that is what comes across in the choices in a lot of our movies.

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.

A role can go from being a babe to anything, as long as it's something that makes me curious.

I trained with the FBI in Portland and I also had many conversations with female FBI agents in Los Angeles, as well. That was again something that also came in very handy for Basic, because I'd learned already how to handle a gun and how to behave just physically when you're in a situation, a threat. That was very good to know.

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.

You love your child and you want to protect your child more than anything on this planet, and yet by the time they're 17, 18, they're going to step into this world, and that world will not feel the same compunction, necessarily, toward your daughter.

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.