Her beauty didn’t do her any good and she couldn’t use it in any positive way or manipulative way. I just hope that people will look and see and believe in that hope of love, that hope of freedom, even if it was just for a limited time.

I really feel like the first day I went to drama school and I went up on stage, that I found my vocation. It's kind of a cliched thing to say but I really feel like it was what I was meant to do.

I don't make movies thinking: 'Oh, this is going to be a huge box-office hit.'

I have three goddaughters - I'm not sure why they trust me, because I have no experience with children - but I try.

I get offered a World War II movie at least once a week just because I speak German and was born there. I have always stayed away from it because I didn't want to be put into that box.

Sometimes it takes courage and experience to allow yourself to actually go into being someone that you're not, and it's the most liberating thing to let go. I do think that's why I love acting - it's being someone that you're not. And sometimes you're really scared of it, and then once you let yourself go there, it's the best thing ever.

Realization that i couldn't be a ballet dancer was a blessing in disguise because that was the first time I felt like I stepped into adulthood. I realized, Okay, this is not going to work out. It was frustrating for about a year because I didn't know what to do with the creativity and the discipline that dancing had instilled in me from a very young age. But then I moved to Paris to model, and that was my cultural awakening. Now, I think dancing has been the biggest thing in my life, much more so than modeling, and it still helps me enormously in my work.