Remember, I'm the kind of kid who used to get stuffed into a locker by school bullies. I've never felt like I'm a big star at any level of my life.

I feel my best when I'm happy.

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.

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

I think that as actresses - and I've definitely gone through this in a really bizarre way, because I worked so much and was really lucky with the roles that I got when I was younger - I remember hearing the older actors saying, "It gets tough," and thinking, "Really? I can't imagine."

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

The fact that I got into acting at all was kind of fluke-ish. I loved movies, but I can't remember ever really wanting to be an actress, and I certainly didn't imagine ever being in a movie. I think I wanted to be a writer.