That one long scene in the Leftovers I have with David Gulpilil was seven pages long. When we finished it, Mimi Leder said, "I thought you were gonna do this in bits and pieces. You just did the whole thing." And I literally couldn't remember the scene. It wasn't that I was in a trance. I said, "Just keep shooting takes until you see what you want." In 48 years of acting, which is also how long I've been married, that had never happened to me.

There was a play that was written by who I think is America's greatest playwright, and he wrote a small part in it for me. It was going to open in Chicago, and then go to New York. But then, he died. It was Arthur Miller. That was the reason I turned Lost down.

I watched some of Lost series. And I realized that the character they wanted me to play didn't really come in for a long time. It would have just been the wrong thing for me to do.

In my life, all of the best things that have happened to me have almost invariably been accidents or fate.

Acting gives you cosmic permission to take a trip in movies that lasts 24 hours a day, seven days a week, until the film is finished.

The hard part about playing 'chicken' is knowing when to flinch.

J.J. Abrams wanted me to do a part in Lost and we probably had three meetings, and I finally turned it down, but it wasn't because I didn't like television or Lost, although I think I said to J.J., "I don't want to be in Hawaii and have an insurance person tell me I'm not allowed to go free dive and spear fishing." That would be the worst kind of torture in the world. But I don't hate television.