I campaigned for [Barack] Obama for more than a year. I was in Iowa, Minnesota, California, Arizona - just traveling around to help get the word out. It was such a huge, spirited campaign, and so positive. But you travel around to cities in the U.S. now and there's just this hopelessness that has set in. It makes it hard to understand why it seems so impossible to make any kind of progressive change with an administration that is seemingly progressive, or why we keep encountering such political roadblocks to change.

I believe that luck is opportunity meeting preparation.

What about my brain? What about my heart? What about my kidneys and my gallbladder?

I've always wanted to work with Cameron Crowe. I've auditioned for him several times for various projects over the last ten years, and I've always admired the way he worked with me.

If Occupy Wall Street was actually a march, and people from all around the country could collect and march toward Washington, D.C., as part of this massive movement of people . . . I think that kind of pressure is much more powerful than a sit-in that seems to be a little unorganized.

Different things work for different people. One thing I've realized, though, is that the work that I've done on myself outside of my work as an actress has really allowed me to open up my mind. I think I understand my emotional state and my complexities now in a much clearer way, and I can put them to rest in a way that there's almost a catharsis that happens through the work, where I can do it and then find myself again.

I don't have a Facebook or a Twitter account, and I don't know how I feel about this idea of, "Now, I'm eating dinner, and I want everyone to know that I'm having dinner at this time." or "I just mailed a letter and dropped off my kids." That, to me, is a very strange phenomenon.