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.

There wasn't space to mood-up. I think Rose Byrne was just extraordinary. Talk about a character that could be really unsympathetic at times. She just jumped in these scenes that go from anger to hysteria to crying to laughing and back to anger. I just marveled.

Sometimes when you have to go into something, unless you're gifted and can just turn it on and off like a jukebox, you find someplace where there's nothing going on to get yourself into whatever state your character is entering into.

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.

I just want my kids to love who they are, have happy lives and find something they want to do and make peace with that. Your job as a parent is to give your kids not only the instincts and talents to survive, but help them enjoy their lives.

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."

With the most interesting directors, the cast comes together to make something magical that nobody counted on.