In cinema people are always walking into something and saying this is who I am, what I want, and how I'm going to get it and we don't in life - particularly not in public situations. People might know your first name, not your last name, they don't know what you do, and you're not going to offer it up. So if you start there and you realize this is a much more normal presentation in a film then you would ordinarily have; you know that there is a big life behind what everyone presents and that I think is super interesting.

I read a lot, I always read. I like to be inside a story. When I started acting, even in high school, it sort of felt like that's as close as you can get to being inside a book, and I feel that way even with movies more so, because you've kind of created this imaginary world, and everybody is colluding to create it.

I was lucky enough to come in at the beginning of the independent film movement, and it's really shaped my life and my career.

Men aren't asked about age. Men aren't asked about their children. Not that these things aren't important, but I do feel like it becomes reductive when a woman's life becomes, 'Talk to me about your kids and how you feel about plastic surgery.'

Nobody does a lot of plotting. They can't. Everybody wants to do that in life, but I think it's almost impossible. Opportunities present themselves, and you say, "Hey, is this interesting to me?" Is this something you might want to pursue? Maybe you'll get it, maybe you won't. It really does have to do with a "one foot in front of the other" kind of thing, I think.

My schedule, it always looks like it's really steady, but believe it or not, I tend to work a bunch and then take a year off.

Either you like a person or you don't like a person. I don't have to love somebody to work with them. I'm a professional person. But when you get the bonus of really liking someone and really connecting with them and really enjoying them, it's a fantastic thing.