Whether a movie part comes to me or I seek it out, there's always this journey to darkness through light, or vice versa; that element has been in almost everything I've done.

I knew you had to go in and audition and maybe they'd hire you, and that's where you start. I had a good understanding about press: that it's the actor's responsibility to publicize his or her films.

I wanted to go to Jupiter. That was my plan from day one, and David Lynch gave me the ticket.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

I would say Steven Spielberg is family to me. He's a genius. We survived a hurricane together. I ran from half-puppet,half-nothing creatures. It was months of our life as family. It was the wildest film, Jurassic Park, I'd ever worked on that way.

It's interesting to talk to my mom about her character in Wild at heart, because she sees her as a mother who's just trying to protect her baby from a bad boy. I think that's why it works so beautifully - she has conviction about what she's doing.

I don't turn my nose up at anything. If it's a great part, it's a great part. It's not like, "I don't make studio films; I work for David Lynch and maybe a few American Playhouse directors, but that's it" - I'd love to do a box-office hit.