When I took my clothes off in Blue Velvet, I wanted to convey the brutality of sex abuse. I wanted to look like a quartered cow hanging in a butcher shop as well as disturbingly appealing.

If you're sad and you like beer, I'm your lady, ... The Saddest Music in the World.

Although Dorothy in Blue Velvet was humiliated and hurt by men, basically I could react to how she felt.

It's hard to make a living in any of the arts. When most people think of artists, they think of the stars and the celebrities. But that's such a tiny minority of the elites who are able to make those millions of dollars. The reality is that it's very hard for the rest to make a living as an artist. So, you really have to persevere and understand that achieving the sort of success where you're making the big money is like winning the lottery.

I was always fascinated by the infinite, strange and 'scandalous' ways that insects copulate.

I always loved experimenting in film.

Mama wrote a letter to my father saying' I want to work with you' and she ended the letter saying' in Italian I can only say ti amo( I love you)' and of course the press used that to say women are sexual predators, in 1949 they made a first film together,' Stromboli', and they fell in love and my mother became pregnant with my brother Roberto before she could obtain a divorce.