I never give any character I play less respect than I give my own life.

Well, it has to do with very deep things, because it might be that imagining yourself as a girl is a diminishment. But it is something that when I made "The Devil Wears Prada" it was the first time in my life, 30 years of making movies, that a man came up and said I know how you felt. I know how you felt. I have a job like that. People understand.

Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.

It's hard to negotiate the present landscape with a brain and a female body.

Empathy is at the heart of the actor's art.

One of the most important keys to acting is curiosity. I am curious to the point of being nosy. What that means is you want to devour lives. You're eager to put on their shoes and wear their clothes and have them become a part of you. All people contain mystery, and when you act, you want to plumb that mystery until everything is known to you.

The reason I chose the movies that I did was based on where they were being filmed.