In the theater, as an actor, you're welcoming people into your house.

I almost never have a plan for myself... I'm not ambitious in that way.

I've often said in the past that I thought MTV was sort of evil incarnate and signified the beginning of the end. And I don't know if I'm entirely wrong about that, but they did sign my paychecks a year ago, so I guess I'm part of the problem.

As an actress for most of my life, I am profoundly familiar with poverty.

I wasn't paraded around for sale at all. My mother wasn't into that.

Once when we were fifteen, River (Phoenix) and I went out for this fancy dinner in Manhattan and I ordered soft-shell crabs. He left the restaurant and walked around on Park Avenue, crying. I went out and said, "I love you so much. Why?" He had such a pain that I was eating an animal, that he hadn't impressed on me what was right. I loved him for that. For his dramatic desire that we share every belief, that I be with him all the way

I prefer to think of the audience as a single living organism with which I am sharing a singular, never-to-be-repeated experience.