My mom was always active. She was always an active voter, whether it was local, state, or federal elections. My mom would take us to polling locations when we were kids.

There are people in America who are absolutely desperate right now, who have no means to support their families, who have no opportunities to better themselves or their education - and they're not that different from the farmers and working-class people that I visited when I went to Kenya with Oxfam.

Every actor has a production company already. It's just a matter of producing your own films under the label of your own production company.

I don't do damsel in distress very well. It's hard for me to play a victim.

I'm so tired of hearing casting directors ask if I have a sore throat. The people who have told me that my voice is distinctive, it's unusual...those people have always been close to my heart.

I would never knowingly go into a film that I wouldn't pay to see, or something that didn't challenge me.

There are more similarities than differences when it comes to preparation of a performance. You're using some lyrics, you have a relationship with them, they apply to different parts of your life and different circumstances, different memories, different stories you have in your head. You form personal relationships with the song. I think that's very similar, in a way, to prepping a character. You pour your own personality, in a sense, into the character, you sympathize with a character in a way that's similar to the way you might sympathize with a song.