When I think about what part of my college experience came back in my work experience, I feel like it was learning how to read deeper, learning how to keep filling the movie up with more and more resonance.

I'd like to work more as a director. It's distracting being an actor, because - there's a lot of reasons. You find out you're going to work about six months before you start shooting, and then there's prep and there's post afterward, and there's stuff to do, and then suddenly you've gone a year without directing. There's a part of me that has to not be tempted by that in order to commit more to the directing. Honestly, the big reason for me to act is to observe other directors and learn from them. That seems to be the biggest draw.

I make dark dramas, movies about people living in desperate fear who then overcome that fear and find a heroic side to themselves.

There is nothing in this world that I am prouder of than my ability to feel, to survive and, yes, to be a fool for what I love and believe in.

When I was growing up, books took me away from my life to a solitary place that didn't feel lonely. They celebrated the outcasts, people who sat on the margins of society contemplating their interiors. . . Books were my cure for a romanticized unhappiness, for the anxiety of impending adulthood. They were all mine, private islands with secret passwords only the worthy could utter.

a woman who struggles to recover from a brutal attack and sets out on a dark, psychological and physical journey for revenge and justice.

The best reason to make a film is that you feel passionately about it.