I'm not much of a Method actress, so even though my character in The Ghost Writer was quite dark and bad-tempered, I could only do that if I was seeming quite perky.

I guess maybe I was hired to play in the Doll House because of my dinner scene in The Sixth Sense, which has been scrutinized a thousand times as to whether you know Bruce Willis is dead, or whether I'm talking to myself. I think that maybe if that could be my forte, to do a scene and be able to say it could be read this way or that way.

I'm on record as having said "I've done this amazing movie - The Sixth Sense - that no one is going to see." And then it stayed in the top 10 American films for about six months. So don't ask me. I'm the most disastrous PR and marketing predictor.

Ewan McGregor is a very genial and entertaining man, and Pierce Brosnan is possibly the nicest man in the world. Actually, it was quite a genial set The Ghost Writer, but the weather and the colors and the actual surroundings were oppressive. But it was a created atmosphere. What was so striking is that Roman Polanski had his crew from The Pianist, and we were shooting in Berlin, so there were German and Polish and French people, and I was just sort of enjoying being in this mix of people, all kind of rubbing along together. That felt good.

I really needed to have something in my life, because I realized there were other things more important than my career. So I love having my children and my family.

When Roman Polanski did give you a "Great, great, great!" you were just like, "Thank you, Lord, for this magical moment."

I wanted to play a TV detective because it's a rite of passage; I wanted to experience every area of acting. I haven't done comedy or as much Shakespeare as I had intended.