We [me,Maggie Smith and Natasha Richardson ] rehearsed [Suddenly, Last Summer] like a play for a month, and then we shot it over the course of... I believe it was 10 days. All live, basically. Long, uninterrupted takes. And for me, a lot of it is me going head to head with Maggie Smith. And anybody who's ever had that opportunity never forgets it! It's a real career highlight, and it was everything I ever thought it would be, and more.

[Allison Janney] could memorize anything.She would memorize in the makeup trailer!

I have had a lot of blessed, interesting things happen to me and have bumped up against some amazing people.

I think it was Alfred Hitchcock who said 90 percent of successful moviemaking is in the casting. The same is true in life. Who you are exposed to, who you choose to surround yourself with, is a unique variable in all of our experiences and it is hugely important in making us who we are. Seek out interesting characters, tough adversaries and strong mentors and your life can be rich, textured, highly entertaining and successful, like a Best Picture winner. Surround yourself with dullards, people of vanilla safety and unextraordinary ease, and you may find your life going straight to DVD.

In no way would I ever assume when I meet some girl that she wants to sleep with me; that doesn't enter my mind. I think somebody who did assume that would be such an insufferably arrogant person that you couldn't be around him.

Sampling, statisticians have told us, is a much more effective way of getting a good census.

We shot every scene of mine in the entire movie in five days. All my coverage, everything. I left. They went back and shot everybody else around me. Insane. The part [Billie in Crazy Six] called for a handsome, coiffed cool guy romantic lead, and I showed up like you see him in the movie. And they let me do it.