I think that's what I really dig about science fiction these days - we've caught up to it in a way. It's no longer about people with huge brains. Now it's really much more, as Jim Cameron says, the nature of being human. What it is to be human in society. How to retain one's humanity in society.

I've always been very shy and sheltered; I think it was a good way of starting to communicate with people. I was taught as a child never to talk about myself, never to talk about my emotions. Of course, now I talk about myself constantly. Now I have to take reverse est.

I actually have a long apology letter from Robert Brustein, saying, "I'm so sorry this happened to you. I didn't realize the people who were running the acting department at the drama school hated actors." They did. And they were fired when I graduated.

I made fun of myself before everybody else could, so I always got the comic crowns: Freshman Fink, Sophomore Fairy, Junior Birdman. I got all three of them!

I don't really see science fiction as fiction. I can imagine colonies on Mars and everything.

I am sent too many mainstream scripts in which the older woman is really quite grotesque. Sometimes you read a script and you feel quite sick that they have to caricature older women in such a negative way.

I'm no Ripley. I had doubts that I could play her as strongly as she had to be played, but I must say that it was fun exploring that side of myself. Women don't get to do that very often.