I don't necessarily like being defined by my profession.

I was so lucky. I was very broke and I was taking classes at Lee Strasberg's Institute and I saw a 3 X 5 index card on the bulletin board advertising for college-aged girls for a film. That was Animal House.

I don't know if I've ever played a character who's close to me. There have been some elements of myself in different roles. Sometimes, I show one side of myself and then completely conceal the other.

The secrecy thing has gotten to be more and more prevalent in films, and maybe that's good. It's nice to go see a film and not know anything about it. Sometimes I feel like we know too much about films.

Let's just say I decided that while my son is young I don't want to do projects that would take me away for months.

I try to offer as much as I can to the director so he has as much to work with as possible to create the character that, really, he wants to create in a sense.

For me, the motivation really was to work with Al Pacino. To me, that seemed like an incredible opportunity, just a learning opportunity because I thought so highly of him.