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.

I am the mother of a 6-year-old now, so that's changed my entire perspective.

You absolutely feel, as a black actress, that you've got to ride the wave because there's just so few roles. I hate to play that card, but it's the truth. There's not a lot of roles.

You have two stark choices when you find yourself in a really desperate situation. You can either fold and cave-in to it or you can become really passionate about getting out of it. When you're really passionate, you're going to grab hold of every rope you see, and wrap them around your arms and legs to claw your way out. And that's the way I've felt in my life.

Denzel [Washington] just knows the actor. He knows the process, and you don't often get that.

That's why there's so much bad acting out there, because you could see actors watching themselves.

I don’t want anyone putting any limits on me.