One of the first lessons I learned as a mom was to forgive myself for not being perfect and to try to prioritize what was really important. I had to really accept very early on that after a while, reading a script and finding the form for the class trip, it was hard to realize which one had priority at times. So I just had to say, "You're doing the best you can, and when you make a mistake, apologize. Your kids know that you love them."

Now, as I move through my fifties, I can be professional and domestic, creative and intellectual, patient and urgent. I have learned that we should never settle for someone else's definition of who we can be. Growing to this age, I realize, is kind of like feeling your voice deepen. It's still your voice, but it has more substance, and it sounds like it knows its own origins.

We were friends with Jonathan Demme. We were all down on the West Side of New York, and I think I met Kurt Vonnegut through Edith Demme. And then I was lucky to do Who Am I This Time? 1982, which was an adaptation of his short story that Jonathan Demme directed with Chris Walken and I, and that really cemented the friendship.

Theater for me is terrifying but much more rewarding, because you know what they're seeing. Film is all little bits and pieces. And you can do an amazing job, but if the camera isn't getting it, it doesn't work. And then other times when you feel you really weren't present, and then you see it and somehow it works. So there's a mystery, there's a strange collaboration that takes place with everybody.

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It didn't seem to have relevance, except in Central America or South America, countries where the church was connected to the fight of the people for economic justice. That's why it was so interesting to find myself back with Sister Helen [in Dead Man Walking], this new breed of nuns who were making a difference in the community.

Everything's serendipitous and there's no way of knowing who's going to get sick or who's going to get hit by a bus or who's going to fall in love and who's going to get pregnant. All the things that happen, it's up for grabs so it's kind of an exercise in surrender in a way.