It's important to just keep wanting whatever it is you want and fight for it, desperately.

I am optimistic. I think that there are a lot of women producing things, not necessarily in the studios. Actresses are putting stuff together. I think there are more stories about women of color [and] older women. But it is slim pickings.

I'm a native New Yorker. Everything to do with New York feels like my family.

I think looking at your own life, on- and offscreen, you can motivate anything, or you can delude yourself into anything.

You have to take away the idea that something you do is right or wrong. I don't think there's a right or a wrong; I think there's an "it works" or "it doesn't work" for the whole. And that's why you need a director you trust, so you can just keep throwing out suggestions.

My intent is to speak on behalf of those whose voices are less readily heard - children and women at risk

I was very withdrawn and definitely played with dolls well into eighth grade. But I was the oldest of nine, and that grounded me in a way that I don't think I would have been grounded otherwise. So I was able to - or forced to - function practically. But I think, by nature, I was someone who lived in my head, in my imagination.