Acting for me is not a bad habit like smoking that I must make an effort to quit. I love acting; I love directing.

I enjoy going back to work now because cinema is going through an exciting period because young people are now going back to the movie theaters. But things are different though.

It's a very obsessive profession that you need to stay obsessed to get anywhere, and it's very easy for us to get obsessed and then nothing else matters. I was reading Somerset Maugham's novella, Moon and Sixpense, about this artist based on Gauguin's life. It was so beautifully written. You must be first rate because second rate you might not survive. If you're an accountant, you'll survive second rate. If you chance it big, you may not get anywhere.

Since my mom is the President of Ballet Hawaii, I'm always in touch with stuff going on.

There is no theoretical study of motherhood. You know, before I became a mother, I did play a mother, but I was like - I was more thinking of my own mother. I was doing my mother.

I grew up in Honolulu. It's not the ballet cultural mecca by any stretch of the imagination. People are much more familiar with hula than they are with ballet.

For the past few years, I was the more visible Asian performer, and I think it gave young girls a kind of role model showing it's possible to actually reach success doing movies.