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.

It would be great to make a movie that had the style of a great '30s film or a movie of David's Lynch or some other director I love that could also make money, because that would say to the corporation, "Yes, you can make money and still do art." But it's tricky.

I'm very connected to my own family, and maybe I like to explore the feelings that come up in families. I'm fortunate that my parents taught me to look further into why I might feel a certain way; it was normal to expose things.

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

You can hardly tell where the computer models finish and the real dinosaurs begin

In Smooth Talk it was a much more intuitive search - I was only 17 at the time, and I wasn't aware, as women are when they get a little older, that there's always a side of a woman that likes a man from the other side of the tracks. We all have an attraction to what's different from us.

I love to rescue animals.... The pounds were so crowded they were putting animals down almost immediately. Seven thousand dogs were put to sleep.