One would expect an actress to stand onscreen mostly as a caricature. If she would say, "I'm selling shoes," you would believe her. She says it and it creates this fiction, non-fiction perception of the film. People believe it because she says it. If she said, "I'm a butcher," people would believe it too, I think.

Sometimes, an actress maybe knows how to think.

My mom's a Catholic, and my dad's a Jew, and they didn't want anything to do with anything.

I always thought that's the exact metaphor, the perfect metaphor for acting. To go blind, to ignore the danger, and to totally trust.

Balzac, you know, our great Balzac, he wrote interesting things about how in literature you keep distance in order to express great feelings. You have to keep a distance - and it's exactly the same with acting.

Before I do a play I say that I hope it's going to be for as short a time as possible but, once you do it, it is a paradoxical pleasure. One evening out of two there are five minutes of a miracle and for those five minutes you want to do it again and again. It's like a drug.

I know some real intellectual people who might laugh, very close friends who might laugh when I'm said to be an intellectual.