A heart can only discover what it really wants with experience.

I was never an ingenue. I've always just been a character actor. When I was younger, it was a real problem, because I was never pretty enough. It was hard, not just for the lack of work, but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.

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

My mother used to tell this corny story about how the doctor smacked me on the behind when I was born and I thought it was applause, and I have been looking for it ever since.

The thing that I've run up against is that it's always been an either-or proposition, especially in Hollywood. You're either young and glamorous and you're going to get the lead and get the man at the end of the picture, or it's the opposite: you're a character actress, you're not attractive enough for the other role, and so you're playing the friend or the killer or the lesbian or the doctor or whatever.

The Oscar changed everything. Better salary, working with better people, better projects, more exposure, less privacy.

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.