I don't think of myself as a terribly confident person. But I have a survival mechanism that was instilled in me by my mother.

I was never completely destitute. I think I borrowed money once off a friend, but I've always been quite careful with my money, having come from not much of it.

It'll take me a lot longer to read a script if there's no director attached.

That's one of the lucky things about getting the success later on. I know how I want to dress, I know what kind of house I want to live in, I just know more about myself, and that's true about the roles I want to play and what parts of myself I want to express. You're just more in touch with yourself.

There's a lot of skeletons in my closet, but I know what they're wearing. I'm not gonna act all ashamed of it.

I think whether you've got children or not you're just more aware of others as you get out of your 20s.

It is a huge amount of pressure playing someone like Valerie Plame-Wilson. First of all who she is and what she's done is wildly intimidating and impressive. It is just scary to take on that responsibility, and you want to honor her story, an incredible story that affected us all. She is often doing things that were confusing to me, like her sexual prowess. I think that she is in a lot of pain and she has been really badly wounded along the way. She doesn't hold men in the highest regard... not just men but people.