I wanted to do something far from my intellectual and physical home, so I went to live in Beijing for eight months and took Mandarin Chinese.

I'm doing things that are more artistic again, more close to the material that I love. I don't disparage those things that I did. They're just not as much reflective of who I am.

I hope that doing truthful portrayals of people in a variety of circumstances gives people a kind of subterranean link to those characters.

We all struggle with our failure to communicate and our failure to reach beyond fear to love people.

Now that I've got some films under my belt, I have the courage of my convictions regarding acting. It gives me a leg to stand on.

The Oscars have become such a big deal these days that it's just used as adjective.

More is spent in a single month [in the U.S.] fighting the war on drugs than all monies ever expended domestically or internationally fighting slavery from its inception. Per month, we spend more on the drug war than we ever have trying to free slaves.