What makes these creatures so awful is the feeling that they can use us in ways too horrible to imagine-and yet, we DO imagine them, which makes it worse than seeing it.

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.

After I left Yale, we were all doing these mad plays off - off Broadway. And I got back to that feeling I had from college, of everyone making up in front of one cracked mirror, which is what I loved - the scrappy theater idea. I think off-off Broadway healed me, made me an actor again, and I was in so many different crazy shows.

In the past, 'Avatar' would have won because Oscar voters loved to hand out awards to big productions, like 'Ben-Hur.' Today it's fashionable to give the Oscar to a small movie that nobody saw.

In Yale they convinced me I had no talent, even though I was always working. They cast me mostly as prostitutes and old women, and I stayed because I loved the writers. I loved Chris Durang and Wendy Wasserstein. I was always doing their work in the Yale Cabaret.

I really enjoy working with younger actors. I just feel like we're all peers together.

I think indie films are really important, because they show the studios and the audiences when they see them, great stories. Really interesting, small stories.