I love being a mother. I loved being a daughter, a sister, a wife. I love being a woman with men. I love having given birth.

At certain times you really feel as though you have to do something.

Allow the diversity to exist. There is nothing wrong with it. Hell, we put up with the religious right-we can put up with transgendered human beings.

TV is sort of the only way to go for an actress my age to make a decent salary; with independent films, you just can't.

For me, acting was always a way to explore emotions - to dip into the well and really try to reach rock bottom down there. That was the most exciting part of it. I hadn't found anything that really allowed me to do that until I came upon acting.

There was a period of time when I was very political, when I was at the university. It was like the late '60s, early '70s and I was a dissident like everybody else I guess. Now I follow it but there's nothing that really grabs me. The most fascinating thing to me right now is China.

I like playing characters who are out there on the edge, where they can explode at any moment or fall off the precipice.