The first thing [in career and motherhood] is a great husband. That I found many years ago and I am lucky in that way.

Anyone who wants to achieve something, needs a lot of work.

People will say to me, ‘You’ve played so many strong women,’ and I’ll say, ‘Have you ever said to a man, “You’ve played so many strong men?”’ No! Because the expectation is [men] are varied. Why can’t we have that expectation about women?

It's sort of my fun to sing along with records and imitate people who are on the telephone that have different ways of speaking.

Women are the last group anyone cares about in Hollywood.

Sometimes you look out the window and you look at all the windows, and think inside very single one of them is somebody with some huge, weird, terrible problem, some great jokes.

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.