Once you've found something you know how to do, it makes you feel you don't have to be intimidated by someone.

There's a side of my personality that goes completely against the educated & serious woman. The side who wants to be a pin-up girl in garages all across America!

There are all kinds of other things I could do, things I would probably like, but only acting would give me emotional fulfillment.

I had started off, before I ever got an acting job, working at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions as a reader. I was always interested in that side of the camera.

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.

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.

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.