What's hardest for me to swallow is when there is a love story, say, with a really high-profile male star and there's no reason I can't play the part. They say, 'Oh, we love Halle, we just don't want to go black with this part.'

I can't imagine my life without animals. I have two dogs and three cats. Coming home and finding them all lined up at the door waiting for me has got to be one of the sweetest joys of my life.

But I just don't think it's an abyss of nothingness [after death] and that we fall off and that our journey stops. I think it's circular and we go and we go and we go. I know that there are civilizations that I think are way more sophisticated than we are and I think more sophisticated civilizations lived before us.

I don't know why, but I respond well to tortured characters.

There have been so many people who have said to me, 'You can't do that,' but I've had an innate belief that they were wrong. Be unwavering and relentless in your approach.

After all, everybody has secrets and there are some things that nobody knows about you but only you, right?

Motherhood sort of puts things into perspective, and it's bout real life, and life is about people, what we give, what we take, what we share.