I'm not done with love, but I refuse to settle.

I have to live for me. I have to do what I need to do for me, and I have stopped concerning myself with what people say.

You have to get the audience invested even if you're doing something that they think is dumb, it's kind of what these movies are all about.

I love a character that gives me a chance to grow and do something different.

I no longer scramble blindly through hardship. I no longer emerge from a bad time feeling relieved just to have survived. Instead of despairing, I try to find the lesson within the experience.

I would say a magical thing happened on when the big 40th birthday came. I felt like a light kind of just went off, and maybe that's because I felt like at 40 I had the right to say and be who I wanted to be, say what I wanted to say, and accept what I didn't want to accept.

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.'