I am very lucky, because for the most part people are very nice to me, and I am still able to go about my life and ride the subway and all that.

People can't really place me. They're not really sure who I am. Sometimes they think I'm Helen Hunt. Sometimes they think I'm Laura Dern.

What people can survive and what they don't survive is shocking to me. Someone can go to Iraq and be blown to bits and survive. Someone can trip and fall on the street and they die - that's that.

When you're dying, you're liberated to do what you want to do. You give yourself permission. I think everyone's experience with a terminal disease is so deeply personal and unique to the person, the context in which they're living and the relationships that they have.

I never felt like a happy-go-lucky ingenue to begin with. And parts are written better when you're older. When you're young, you're written to be an ingenue, and you're written to be a quality. You're actually not written to be a person, you're written for your youth to inspire someone else, usually a man. So I find it just much more liberating.

I could have gone to the gym for three hours a day and bought into all that, but I just wasn't interested.

I don't mind aging. I mean, my whole thing is, it's just a privilege to age.