I remember the whole thing with the word ambition. I was messed up for a while because I associated it with certain people who just want to be famous. I think, for a while, it was kind of a dirty word for women.

The older you get, the more yourself you can be and the less worried you are about what other people think.

I remember realizing, when I did Little Women [1994], that that was the only time girls that age were being written about. It was always boys - from David Copperfield to Lord of the Flies to Holden Caulfield. There were never young women going through adolescence or teen years; there were only little girls.

I'm not a big one on - I don't know what to call it - getting all glamorous. I don't really worry about my looks, and I don't worry about getting old. Exterior beauty doesn't mean a lot to me.

There's like this great thing that Bette Davis said when someone asked her, "How do you get into Hollywood?" "Take Fountain!"

You look at people like Gena Rowlands, but she had [John] Cassavetes to write these amazing roles for her.

I am not a person who can really sit around and think about regrets because with every bad experience that you have, there is weirdly something good that comes from it.