In terms of our foreign policy, that's where we made a mistake after 9/11. Everyone's going, "Why, why, why," and there wasn't any investigation or learning from any of what we had been doing up to that time that had set us up.

If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family.

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 always think that the difference between film and theater is like the difference between masturbation and making love. Because, in film, you just have to get one moment right; you're practically by yourself. And in theater, you actually have to have a relationship with the audience.

I always had a problem with original sin; I always had a problem with the exclusivity of the church and a lot of the things that the nuns taught me.

We have more families at risk with the death penalty. It targets the voiceless, the poor, people of color. And so it's important just to understand what your government is doing and how much they are spending.

I've always had a really developed sense of justice. As a child, I would rotate my dolls' dresses for fear that they might come alive at midnight and one of them would always have the best dress on. Whatever it was that made me worry about my dolls I suppose has paid off in my career because, really, an actor is all about empathy and imagination. And those are the cornerstones of activism.