If you're a boxer, you want to get the ring with a Mike Tyson or Muhammad Ali type. When you're acting, you want to get in with Meryl Streep, and that's what I did.

If the opportunity is not out there for you to play it, then you don't see it.

Anything can be achieved with a good, healthy dose of courage.

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

I think that enjoying the fruits of one's labor is very different than arrogance. And when I was younger, I didn't know the difference. I thought that if you were gracious, that meant that you somehow were getting ahead of yourself. And I felt self-deprecation kept you balanced.

Ultimately, it's not your job, as an actress, to satisfy people's expectations or image of who you should be. Even in your life, you are just who you are.

I don't have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn't love me has to say about me.