I'm very patient and always willing to try things but I have some resistance as well because I have my own vision. I have resistance sometimes because I see a director who's freaking out and wants to have control and they sometimes anticipate about what I'm going to be doing or not.

In Iran, the women are like Italian women, they rule the house inside. But it's full of life. The history is very rich. The mystic of the Middle Ages. We have to learn from them. They influence all the philosophers when they came to Europe all those many many years ago.

I've played journalists before Elles, and I have good friends who are journalists. I think being an actor is not very far from being a journalist. Because you investigate, you try to understand, you're asking questions, you're interested in the other.

You have to be very cautious about what you are doing for charity and things like that. I think you have to start with your life. I think that's what life is expecting you to do. In your family, in your surroundings, in your work life, in the people you're with, your relationships; how you behave and doing what you need to accomplish. That for me is being a hero every day of your life.

As actors, we are so privileged to do what we do and to give to the world and to choose the subject we want to say to the world.

Each new film is like a trial. Before I step in front of the camera, I do not know whether I am going to fall or whether I am going to fly - and that is exactly the way I want it to stay.

Before I thought there was a common denominator between my films - as if all my characters were sisters - but I'm not so sure now.