I met the former president of Iceland [Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir] once. I think she was president for, like, 16 years or something. She said she used to get letters from little boys saying, "Madam President, do you think it will ever be possible for a boy to be president?" Just like we assume that girls can't be politicians, they were assuming boys can't. That's what they thought. It's so crazy.

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.

My daughter was a toddler. I had no idea there was anything wrong with kids' media.I started watching little preschool shows with her or G-rated videos or whatever; I couldn't believe what I was seeing, that there seemed to be far more male characters than female characters in what we make for little kids. It was just a shock.

When I started watching Breaking Bad, I binge-watched it. I thought it was so good that I started to cry. It's the only time in my life I've been completely jealous, the only time. I was like, [imitates crying] "I want to do what Bryan Cranston gets to do. I want a part like that." [both laugh] Isn't that pathetic?

I think if you're doing a play, you're rehearsing enough that you get to a point where it's freeing again. But in a movie, if you rehearse too much, now you've just shown everybody what you're going to do. And any element of surprise or impulsiveness is taken away.

For a long time, way back in the ’30s and ’40s, there were fabulous female roles. Bette Davis and all those people had incredible, great roles. After World War II, something happened where it was not only "get out of the factories," but "get out of the movies." That's when women's roles started to really [change].

It's a horrible and wonderful battle with yourself, to stay calm, stay in the moment. My coach said, "Stay here, not at the target. Don't be down there." It's why they call it the Zen art.