Ridiculously - fortunately - my first job was with Dustin Hoffman. I had a little part in this movie called Tootsie. And he taught me how to watch dailies. That it was very important.

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.

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 always want a challenge. My whole career has been based on trying to avoid female characters that don't get to do anything. And it's really hard to avoid those.

It's partly because our culture so hyper-sexualizes females that if you don't measure up to whatever we're forced to think is the standard, then you feel inadequate.

On film, you can't do it over again. And you do have to stop shooting at a certain point.

The film festival is in a town in Arkansas, a quintessentially American town with a little town square. It's to champion women and diversity in all media, so TV, movies, eventually, digital, whatever you get into. That's the goal. We're using the same philosophy as my institute, which is to make it research-based and really try to work directly with filmmakers and content creators and move the needle. It's the only film festival in the world where the prizes are guaranteed distribution.