My parents were devoted. Civic minded. We had family counsels. Three of us children against two of them. We lived a 'Leave It to Beaver' time.

I wanted to put all my family stories down for my girls, and I remember everything so vividly. I just wanted to put everything down while I still can remember it all.

You relate to a character and you find that character within yourself. It's all parts of me. I don't leave characters behind. I just let them go.

Our perception of celebrities in Hollywood is not the reality. The reality of our lives is so much like everyone else's life. We have family members we love, everyone gets up in the morning, they have three meals a day and they go about their business.

I had a dozen years to act before starting a family then found that motherhood dwarfed everything else. Once or twice a year, I take a project that appeals to me for its redeeming social value.

It's a whole other way of working when you work in films: You know exactly the arc of your character.

But you finally think, there is what there is, and you have to work within those confines and just keep chipping away at your own work.