I don't like to be overly directing people either. I tell them what I want and I tell them when it's wrong. I tell them no, that's not what I want. I want it more like this or more like that. I'm pretty direct with everyone, and I treat everyone the same which might be good.

I'm 43, and I really don't take care of my looks. It's kind of a bad thing for an actress, but at the same time, I can't go there. I like clothes because clothes are fun. I'm still a girl, I mean, a woman, and I still love shoes. But the aging and the face...and how do you stay young and skinny and all that? I feel like if I focus on those problems too much, I'm going to lose myself in them, and it's not very interesting.

It's definitely easier for a woman to do a romantic comedy than a war movie. It's assumed a woman doesn't have a sense of what action is.

In your thirties, you're much more comfortable with sex. First of all, sex is something you've done more. You know you can have sex just to have sex; you can have sex with friends; you can have sex with people you love; you can have sex with people you don't like, but the sex is good. And you can joke about sex much more.

Very quickly I realized that directing is a combination of things: It's visual, it's directing the actors, it's telling a story. And people don't always mention this part of directing, but it's also knowing how to really edit something into something that makes sense.

I've never had help from anyone, ever. I've never had this great director who saw themselves in me, because I'm a French woman in Hollywood. Who could identify with me as a successful director in Hollywood? Nobody. And the few people who could have been mentors, instead they just stole my ideas.

It's very hard to sustain love, that's for sure. But the more you have your own life and your own self, and the less you give away who you are, the more men are attracted to you. The more desperate you are for a relationship, the worse it is to find a healthy relationship. Because the minute you become one-and-a-half people instead of two, it's a mess. Nobody's happy. Keeping your identity and having your own life and your own self, that's the only way I can make my life and sustain life.