When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films.

I just passed on some a script that I was sent, because I said, "I haven't yet played the person staying home, the one that says, 'Good luck, honey,' or whatever." And so that's what I look for. Therefore, by virtue of that exclusion, I'm always trying to find roles that are challenging.

My sons last summer, they won a trophy from their surfing camp and they came home and went right over to the shelf and put it up next to my Oscar. That's where we put our trophies.

Everything I do, I want to take it to the farthest possible degree. I can't just do something the plain way. I don't cook a bowl of pasta; it has to be puff pastry swans.

We need more female directors, we also need men to step up and identify with female characters and stories about women. We don't want to create a ghetto where women have to do movies about women. To assume stories about women need to be told by a woman isn't necessarily true, just as stories about men don't need a male director.

I had a pretty poor self-image for a long time. I broke into acting as a model in New York. I was never anything like a "supermodel," but I made a living at it for a couple years. The thing was, I was convinced that I was tricking everyone into thinking I was attractive.

The most common occupation for women in G rated films is royalty - which is a great gig, if you can get it.