I find that I'm fighting to keep my energy and my passion centered on the work and not on "Will this get me an Oscar?" - which is the way people are starting to talk to me. I'm not interested in the way people are starting to talk to me. I'm not interested in looking at a role that way. That's not what I ever did, and it's not how I can continue to do my work.

I hope I look skinnier in 3D. I hope I don't look three times as fat. That'll be disappointing.

The relationship to the director is becoming more crucial to me, making sure there are some common goals. I haven't been in the kind of position where my roles have been chosen for me, where someone says, "First we'll do this and then we'll do this," and it's all part of some master plan.

We all love to hear a good story. We save our stories in books. We save our books in libraries. Libraries are the storyhouses full of all those stories and secrets.

O.K., we had women's lib in the '60s, the women fought for their roles, they're out there in the work force. Now let's talk about how they're dealing with things as human beings.

I find it safer to pursue the powerful, the ugly, the unpleasant.

I look for a role that hopefully I feel empathy with and that I can understand and love, but also that has that challenge for me to play - a different kind of role, a different type of character, a different time period.