I still battle with my deeply boring diet of, essentially, yogurt and breakfast cereal and granola bars. I hate dieting. I hate having to do it to be the 'right' size. I'm hungry all the time. I think I'm a slender person, but the industry apparently doesn't. All actresses are hungry all the time, I think.

Sarah Palin's real quality is that she is her own best creation.

First of all, as a professional, you can run around saying "artists, schmartists" as much as you want. But I'm a professional, so if somebody hires me for something, I'm going to bring my best to it. They've hired me, I'm professional, I show up on time, I do my job. That's what we're doing. So in that sense, it's always both things.

A mid life crisis is nothing but getting to the point where you go, have I done what I wanted to do? Am I living the life that I want to live? Am I appreciating what I have? If you don't get to that point developmentally, you're not doing it correctly. The people who get to that age and haven't reassessed usually haven't faced the fact that that's where they are.

Life is full of compromises, and whether or not you're willing to negotiate.

When I was younger, I thought I had to shut myself off, work really hard to cry. I learned after a while that that's just not... You know, often in life, you cry when you're caught off-guard. That's where I need to be when I'm acting, too.

If you're 50, you're never going to be 50 ever again, so enjoy being 50. If you sit through the year wishing you were younger, before you know it, it's going to be over, and you're going to be 51.