I remember Anthony Perkins saying, "Real is not necessarily interesting." So real is not enough. But what happens as an actor is that you're really trained to listen and to be open and have empathy. It's such a natural consequence that you end up being more political. You can empathize with the mother whose kids are going to be sent to Iraq, or you can emphasize with the mother who is losing their child to a disease. How could you not then be active? So you're automatically drawn to that aspect in the rest of your life.

I can't speak for other people, but for me, it never really worked to think something like, "What Beatle did she like in high school?" or those kinds of elaborate backstories.

By the time I went to the Catholic University of America, which was the time the priests were all leaving with the nuns, the more I studied about the Bible and how it came about, the more I lost my faith.

I hope they're present in their lives and feel some kind of empathy. I think a lot of the mistakes that have been made in the world have been through a lack of empathy. If you can identify with someone else and empathise with someone else, then activism is a short step away, she explained in an interview with Parade.

The directors I consider really great have the ability to recognize when something's going in an unexpected direction and see it as a bonus and be able to go with it, as opposed to locking down what they thought was going to happen.

My aunt had given me these rosary beads that were glow-in-the-dark. So all of a sudden I look down and they're glowing, and I'm looking toward the door and thinking, "Oh, my God, I don't want anything to come though here. I'm not worthy, I'm not ready." I didn't want to be one of those kids who sees Our Lady of Fatima.

How will the bombing of Baghdad, a city of five million, accomplish a regime change?