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

The phrase you usually hear after a cut is "That was great. Perhaps we could have another go. Maybe try it this way." Even that much direction is prefaced with a lot of praise and encouragement. It's quite like how you deal with toddlers: positive reinforcement, and then a little suggestion that you might want to try something different. Roman Polanski will stop the take and shout, "No, no, no!" Which is somewhat alarming the first time it happens.

There are movies where I've walked onto the set and felt, "This is home," and I'm confident in myself and my work, but that was my first experience of live TV. At that stage, Friends was at its unassailable height of popularity and brilliance.

I am the worst judge of how a movie is going to do. I always have great and ambitious hopes, but none of them see the light of day.

My parents have always been cool. They even became surrogates to friends of mine who didn't have such supportive parents.

Working with Roman Polanski is funny. It's like anything in life - someone warns you that something's going to be amazing or difficult or awful, and you say, "I can do that. I can cope with that." And then when you're in the middle of it, it may be joyful or tricky, but it's never difficult in the way you think it's going to be difficult.

When The Sixth Sense was the No. 1 movie in America, I had a Canadian boyfriend whose only assets at the time were a guitar and a van. I don't know what I was thinking.