Any good relationship that I've had with an actor has always been so emotional and personal. If you don't have that then you're just lying.

With every project, you feel like you're trying to find your place to vent. For any actor, that's typically the feeling that drives you to do it.

I hear actresses talking about this all the time - this idea that you sit in meetings and the studio says, "Well, you can't do that because the audience won't like that. They won't root for you. It's not sympathetic." I think that we've been served this one dish for so long that we believe that it's all that audiences want, but when we test them or throw something out there that has some truth to it, they seem to always respond.

People cultivate these fully formed personalities.

When you love something, you get to know it. Then you feel the ownership and if it changes, you only love it as far as you know it because then you're like, "What is this?"

I know that people's judgments are fast, and in a split second I will ruin it.

People expect it to be easy because there you are, out there, doing the thing that you want and making lots of money out of it. But, you know, I'm not that smooth. I can get clumsy around certain people. Like if I were to sit down and think, 'OK, I'm really famous, how am I going to conduct myself in public?' I wouldn't know who that person would be! It would be a lot easier if I could, but I can't.