It wasn't easy to adopt an American child. Actually it's quite simple, but finding out how to do it was the hard part.

It wasn't easy to adopt an American child. Actually it's quite simple, but finding out how to do it was the hard part.

I don't card out my screenplays ever. I just have an idea I just sit down and write I don't edit. Sometimes the first draft will come out at 200 pages. I think and think and I go, "um this story is about the brother that appears on page 178." I go back and I rewrite.

Sometimes I'm surprised when someone who has achieved success is incredibly Machiavellian in their manipulations. So, while I want to believe it's integrity, that might just show how naïve I am. I sometimes worry that I might not be shrewd enough to maneuver myself through the Hollywood system.

I feel the same way when I meet somebody in Los Angeles, because I'm from Winnipeg. I'm just a very ordinary girl that something extraordinary happened to. So, I'll go to an event and, say, stand next to Charlize Theron and be like, "Oh my God! This is incredible!" And then you get to talk to her and you find out she's a real person. She's a mom and very interesting. I'm constantly thunderstruck by people that I admire.

If the standard route for creating a family had worked for me, I wouldn't have met this child. I needed to know her. I needed to be her mother. She is, in every way my daughter.

I thought I was attractive when I shot 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding.' Studio executives and movie reviewers let me know I had a confidence in my looks that was not shared by them.