I grew up in San Francisco. My parents were not hippies; they were writers. They were very active politically, but on the intellectual side, not on the "taking drugs in a field and listening to the Grateful Dead" side.

I remember when I did Little Women, I didn't watch the Katharine Hepburn one over and over, which I thought I would do. Heathers, I was completely obsessed with.

If I showed you scripts from my first few movies, the descriptions of my characters all said 'the ugly girl'.

Scapegoating will go on forever. We need someone to blame - illegal immigrants, single moms, people in prison. We need someone to victimize.

When I was young, I was really, really obsessed with Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes. Because my mom was a projectionist in college, she was somehow able to get a real projector. And she had some connections, so she would get real prints, and we'd put up a sheet. The first movies I saw were To Kill a Mockingbird [1962], Gigi [1958], A Woman Under the Influence [1974]. Then when I was old enough to be able to rent movies, I went through a very big Cassavetes phase.

I watched this documentary on Madonna. I remember I grew up hearing she wanted to rule the world. Actually, she worked really hard - really, really hard.

I'm not interested in playing the girl that's just there to make the guy, you know, give him a talking to.