I can't speak for the Kathryn Stockett, but I would guess that she feels proud of the progress the South has made because, growing up, she experienced a very different Mississippi than the one that exists today.

On stage you never watch yourself. You just experience it, and then you go home, and you feel pretty good if you gave a pretty good performance or crappy if you didn't. But in TV and film, you actually have to experience it while you're doing it, and then you have to watch it. And then when you're watching it, you watch it with a different sensibility than how you experienced it.

Actor is just a strange profession, it really is, that you could be in front of the same people for years, and all of a sudden one thing happens, and it finally clicks.

I look back at pictures of myself and I remember thinking, "I was so fat when I was growing up. I was 165 pounds when I graduated from high school. I was a mess".

It made me realize again how complicated being a mother is. You have 50 million heartbreaking moments, and 100 million beautiful, joyous ones.

[Denzel Washington] was rustling with something and when he came back it was with a word about loving myself and the body that I'm in because I was still going on and on about the weight thing. I just liked that, because what people don't understand is that so much of what blocks us as actors is so personal.

Recognition has brought me more work, because your name suddenly comes to mind when some directors are trying to cast a character. And my stage work has specifically enabled people to have faith that I can handle a role, even when it's not specifically written for an African-American. So, I'd have to say that recognition brings work. A successful movie brings more work, and that been the biggest blessing.