The progression of roles you take strings together a portrait of an actor, but it's a completely random process.

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.

We're viewed as equals - but we're still not there yet. The challenge for our girls, I think, is dealing with that resistance. How can we lift and defuse it, how do we make it so our equality is not so threatening? Our girls are going to have to contend with that. I contend with it right now in every realm I operate in.

The career I chose was a drama major in college, at Yale, when I played a 90-year-old woman. One of my most celebrated roles. Then I played a really fat person. I played a lot of different things. That's how I thought I loved to wrangle my talent, my need to express myself. I like to do it that way.

I've been making a lot of pasta. It's easy. There are unusual tastes that you can combine. I cook because my kids like a certain kind of thing and then they want it over and over.

I always feel like I can't do it, that I can't go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all.

Enough people write about me every day without even interviewing me.