You hope that the same people are coming back. I love playing with Angela [Bassett]. She's fierce. I met her years and years ago when she was a student at Yale, so to see her do these fierce roles and go on to [be] this powerhouse has just been awesome.

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.

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.

There are a lot of powerful women in Hollywood who have been movie stars for a long time who are getting into their forties and fifties. I still want to see them work.

I see my sisters, my mother, my grandmother. I like the way I look. I think I have a nice face. I like my eyes, my mouth. I have a good nose. I have good skin.

I went from years of honing my craft to sudden recognition. It was quite a life changer.

I want to see women onscreen the way I see them in society.