I think when things happen in our lives that we can't truly understand why they destroy us, it's because we can't truly understand or communicate it to anyone else. And that is what is destructive - you can't communicate it to the people that you love and it makes things deteriorate. Or you're hiding from yourself, or you're hiding from somebody else, and that was really fascinating to me... that life isn't like the movies and you can't always point to one thing and explain why you did things that ended up hurting you.

I think you have to have a little bit of a screw loose to think that you can [become an actor] because the odds are so against you. I was just crazy enough to think I could do it.

People are drawn to watching things that are dramatic. And the tighter a relationship is, the more dramatic it can be. That's something family lends itself to. Everybody has family, somewhere, somehow. Those relationships are always very complex. This takes it to almost Greek-tragedy-level heights. That's fun to watch, although it's very uncomfortable. It explores the darkest sense of family.

I think some of the most important things we read about other people occurs from being able to read their faces and their eyes and their body and those kinds of things.

Being raised Catholic myself, I think people who are Catholic tend to carry a lot of guilt. It's almost a joke.

I think the hardest thing about the part is the responsibility that you feel playing something that is so real and resonant in our times. There are people coming home right now with those stories, and I'm just an actress pretending to be that person. You hope that you can shed some light on somebody's predicament.

You can be a woman in charge of a production and still be generous and kind and insightful and decisive without being considered a butch in any way.