If you have been touched by the success fairy, people think you know why. People think success breeds enlightenment and you are duty-bound to spread around like manure. Fertilize those young minds!

How do I do that preparation [for film]? Just an immersion. I have a musician's, I guess, ear for the sound of the voice but it's also important to me, in the case of [playing] someone who is controversial, to get the outlines of the character right because how they present themselves to the world has a great deal to do with how people feel about them.

Singing and acting are very similar. Singing makes you reach into your deepest feelings. Singing is an extension of everything that you do when you're acting.

You know, you're not aware of it, but you're following the action of the film through the body of the protagonist, you know? You feel what he feels when he jumps, when he leaps, when he wins, when he loses. And I think I just took it for granted that, you know, we can all do that, but it became obvious to me that men don't live through the female characters.

Wrinkled, wrinkled little star... hope they never see the scars.

I don't know what my image is. I went to France to publicize Marvin's Room, and one really smart young woman journalist said to me, "You know, when I told people I was going to interview Meryl Streep they were so excited... all ze women in my office, they love you so much. But ze men - they are afraid of you."

I can become you for a second and you can become me and this lifts us up.