You can't play history and you can't play historical characters. You just have to reduce it to the ordinary.

As an actor, I usually have to find something to love about my character in order to play her.

I grew up a middle class, colonized child of teachers, and librarians and people, women especially, who treasured education.

So many young people feel powerless. We live in a world where it feels like it's so big and yet so small, and that your contribution really doesn't matter.

When you eliminate vanity from an art form, and I would think that this would be any art form, what is left is an opportunity to be incredibly naked and truthful.

You can't play history and you can't play historical characters. You just have to reduce it to the ordinary.

We actors are superstitious creatures. We do all the homework and we put all of the components together, but there's always one key aspect that we're not in charge of, really, and that's magic. You are always on the lookout for where and how that magic is going to ignite. When you have worked as much as I have and have sought it out as often as I do, you get very clear that it will come at very, very odd, unexpected moments.