It sounds like a cliché, but mother is really one of my closest friends, and so's my dad. He and I weren't very close when I was younger, but now we're best friends.

Even if you've gone through an average childhood, you have girlfriends who get pregnant and then have to choose whether or not to have a child. And this stuff certainly makes you think about what you're taking on. I certainly want to have children, but I could never do it until I felt I loved myself enough, and wanted to bring someone into the world because I had some kind of security.

I'm lucky enough that directors sometimes seek me out for little projects that people don't even know about, that just surface later on.

I feel that movies are gifts that come to you, and there are no accidents in what you end up doing.

I do think my mother was a bit overprotective, not in any sordid way, but just normally. She certainly might say to me, "You know, Laura, I don't have a good feeling about that guy. I don't know if I want you to go out with him."

I hope we can be consummate artists as women or revolutionaries, or whatever women want to be, and also have love, not only for ourselves but from a partner.

I made a commitment to myself: that I wanted to be an actress, and I wanted to do films that make a difference. Whether it makes someone laugh, or it has a moral to the story - it doesn't have to be an ethical film, but it has to move people. If it doesn't excite me, it's not worth doing - it's better to work on myself and my own life and wait until another great thing comes along.