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.

Look at the number of cop shows and lawyer shows and forensics shows... I think there could be room for two quite different examinations of the same political office.

I was lucky enough to be in some movies where I had powerful characters or I got to be the president on TV for a little while. Very short administration.

Any movie you see, if Tom Cruise is in an action movie or whatever it is, The Avengers, there's going to be a kick-ass female character. Usually one. And there's a term for this, but I don't know what it is. But someone's coined a term where there's one female character who's incredibly tough and strong and just as good as the guys at whatever it is they’re doing, and usually wearing black, skin-tight clothes, and [she] has no personality whatsoever, and is not funny.

I'm the mother of two daughters, one of whom is going to get possessed. It's really spooky and great. I'm shooting it right now. That's why I'm in Chicago. I wanted to tell you about the other direction that this trying-to-get-more-female-characters thing has taken, which is that I launched my own film festival last year.

I love theater. Just, it never spoke to me.

I think I always had joie de vivre. But I had pretty bad self-esteem growing up and much of my adult life.