I discovered that joy is not the negation of pain, but rather acknowledging the presence of pain and feeling happiness in spite of it.

[My mother] always said I was beautiful and I finally believed her at some point.

Steve McQueen is a genius. And I think that word is overused, but I think with Steve it's rightly used. He's a genius.

What I've learned from myself is that I don't have to be anybody else. Myself is good enough.

You win an Oscar, and immediately people ask how you feel. So you don't have time to actually feel anything because you have to generate a response. And then some of the feelings you have are so intimate and visceral, words don't really do them justice.

What I will say is that what I have learned for myself is that I don’t have to be anybody else; and that myself is good enough; and that when I am being true to that self, then I can avail myself to extraordinary thingsYou have to allow for the impossible to be possible.

It's so much more fun to do the work than to talk about it. I will have to admit that. Everybody gets to decide how they feel, and what to take away by themselves, and that's what you hope for. That people will take away different things and have different experiences from the work we do as actors. So I don't like to prescribe how to feel about the work I do.