I have plenty of vanity in my life. I want to look pretty in the world. But it can be this bottomless pit.
I'm very vain about my performance. I want to give as honest a performance as I can. But I'm not so worried about being regarded as beautiful when I'm playing a character.
I exercise more for mental relaxation than anything else.
I try to eat sensibly. I cheat, but for the most part, I eat in a clean way.
I eat in moderation and try not to worry about it.
I don't want to be an actress. I want to be doing good work that is well written and has good people in it.
I just want to be a sane person. I wanna be a person who has a life and who acts.
I think you can become dependent on fame and be as known as you want to be, you know?
It's a very young mistake to assume that life is very serious. I get the joke now.
I do feel like I've gotten younger as I've aged.
When somebody asks me who I'm wearing, I always see myself with a BabyBjoern, carrying a little tiny Karl Lagerfeld, like, 'I'm wearing Chanel.'
Working gives you this new perspective. You don't take everything too seriously, and you realise that if you don't do too well on a history test, it's not the end of the world.
I was an actor who happened to be a kid.
It's been a great privilege to see how interwoven nations are and how incredibly complex these relationships are. It's so elaborate.
I wouldn't say that I'm a naturally political beast.
Germany's fascinating. It's a really rich landscape to film and dramatise.
I love Berlin.
I would be a terrible CIA officer in real life.
I've never been interested or particularly good at censoring my experience.
I still have a book club with my friends from when I was 5. That's the privilege of growing up in a place where people want to remain. It's a huge gift.
You have to come to work from a place of love.
I think people are made uncomfortable by uncensored expressions of emotion.
The twenties are a deceptively challenging-slash-painful time. I'm just glad to be out of that phase.
I am a feminist.
I care about being formally physically attractive in my life, and I think that I am quite vain about my performance. I'm just not vain about how I look while I give the performance.
I love sitting in the makeup trailer and getting my makeup done in 15 minutes as opposed to an hour and a half.
If I hadn't been an actress, I was thinking seriously about going into psychology. It's just really what I'm interested in: the human psyche and how we process information.
I was a pretty nerdy kid. I was pretty nerdy. I'm still kind of nerdy. I have all of the worst qualities of being a nerd - all of the affect and none of the smarts. I'm a useless nerd! That's pretty bad.
Television lets audiences deeply connect with characters.
My first offer was when I was 12, and it was for a soap opera. And I turned it down because I knew that I was an unformed actor, and I didn't want to develop bad habits.
I have to say that my dad's face is very malleable. He's barely got any cartilage in his face. I think I maybe inherited that Play-Doh-like physicality from him.
So much of my job is about finding another job, and that's really boring.
Growing up in New York City, I was always encouraged to question authority, and I think I confused patriotism with jingoism.
I would not say that secret-keeping is one of my finer skills, actually.
I'm just a big old nerd.
I was a serious kid to an absurd degree. I was overwhelmed with responsibility. You know, trying to play grown up. I overdid it.
I don't know any celebrated people that register in a big way who aren't unique.
I guess I stopped acting when I was 18 and didn't pick it up again until I was 21. That wasn't the plan, though. When I first started at Yale, the plan was to do a movie each summer.
By the time I went to Yale, I'd been acting for a long time and I was really tired of it. I was restless - and a little bored - and I was really eager to investigate different parts of myself.
I'm just always learning lines. I've learned to flag the really crucial scenes, and I start figuring them out and committing them to memory as soon as I get them.
I was a very confident child. I knew I wanted to be an actress from the age of 5.
My parents never condescended to me. As a child, I always sat at the head of our dinner table. I was always given a lot of responsibility.
It's very difficult to judge yourself. Extreme self-doubt is only attractive when it's fictionalized. Which is why people love the movies. They are so reassuring.
I like marriage. I feel very secure. It helps when you are in love with the person you are married to.
I could truly have gone through life thinking that women were these venomous creatures. Turns out, they're not.
I've always very earnestly tried to do my best, so I just have to trust that and forgive myself for being fallible.
I discovered Christopher Isherwood in college. His writing style is so direct, warm, and inclusive.
Acting is a humiliating job, from start to finish.
Oliver Stone's strategy is to unnerve the actors so as to make them alert and alive.
College was just so essential for my sense of self and my development.
I would rather not work than be a neurotic mess.
Every time I make a movie, I'm prepared for it to become influential and career-defining - but I have no control over these things.
I particularly love Israel. I've had fantastic experiences there.
If I took my characters home with me, half of my life would be a misery, I think. No, I tend to compartmentalize work from my life. I'm not terribly method.
I discovered Orson Welles in college; my freshman English professor screened 'Citizen Kane' for us, and I wound up writing a 20-page term paper on it.
In New York City, everybody goes into therapy.
I was very driven to act from a very young age, and my parents were not only tolerant of that drive but also encouraging.
People confuse fame with validation or love. But fame is not the reward. The reward is getting fulfillment out of doing the thing you love.
Actors want to surprise themselves. When it's really good, you kind of transcend yourself, and that happens infrequently. Very, very rarely.
I'm exceptionally open with my own parents, and they're exceptionally open with me.
I got an agent when I was 12, and I started working in more amateur productions well before that. But even as a kid, I never felt like a kid actor, you know? I always took myself kind of absurdly seriously.
I actually haven't been approached a whole lot for television, believe it or not.
We just can't shake monogamy. It definitely demands a kind of rigor and discipline and selflessness. But it's also fun.
It's funny with jeans now, because if they don't feel like a pair of sweatpants, I don't have patience for them anymore! I think I'm becoming increasingly lazy.
When I was a kid, I was one of those really obnoxious 'oooh oooh' girls, with my hand up in the air constantly. I've learned over the years that that's not so attractive, so I've censored that.
I am not a genius. But I am nerdy.
I think I would make a lousy stay-at-home mom. It just wouldn't suit me.
You have to stay hydrated when you have crying scenes.
You have to pick your battles on set.
I can get a dance party started pretty much anywhere and anytime.
Autism does exist on a spectrum, and there are so many manifestations of it, so many kinds of expressions of it. And every case is particular.
Most people assume that autistic people are not capable of empathy.
I should be so lucky to be a misfit. I aspire to be a misfit.
I think people who make movies and have invested a lot of money in them get frightened that if they challenge an audience they are going to repel them. And I think the opposite; it's really true.
Voice over can be tricky. It can be dangerous because it's over-used or inappropriately used.
I think 'Breaking Bad' is incredible.
Any story is better with a little love in it, right?
When you really get it right in acting, it's an act of empathy. You feel less distant from others, and that is really exciting.
I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behavior.
Steve Martin is one of my favorite performers, writers, artists of all time.
I'm so impressed by Jennifer Lawrence and Carey Mulligan. They have this exquisite taste. They are very gifted in their ability to make great choices.
On a film you can really get away with learning the scene the night before and that's often just not possible with TV, so you have to be a little bit more prepared a little bit more in advance.
Psychology and acting are very closely linked. It's just about studying people and how they work. It can be an incredible discipline and exercise.
The first time I realised I was patriotic was after September 11th.
I think it's important to never play 'crazy' - you have to know what kind of crazy you're playing.
I became very successful at a young age... I had lots of opportunities and lots of power and had no idea how to focus it.
However, I'm at a very comfortable place in my career and celebrity, in that I don't have to audition as extensively as I used to for roles but yet I'm not immediately recognizable.
I hadn't been free from adult responsibilities since I was 12, and I needed to experience that. I really needed to just be a kid again.
I know, it's true. I've played these tortured teenagers. I can't wait to shed that image.
I really liked Yale, although it was extremely intimidating. When I visited the campus, I was hiding behind trees, I felt so unworthy.
I think because I am as earnest as I am, people were accepting of my evolving into a certified, legitimate, and grown up and I did take three years off.
I took three years off. I differentiated myself from the industry. Found my identity - sort of... I haven't graduated yet. I'm not legitimately educated yet, but maybe one day.
I would sign on for projects that were meant to shoot in July, and then they would postponed and they would bleed into the following semester, and then I'd take a semester off, and then the movie would collapse.
I'm only realizing now that I was a child actress because I always took myself so seriously.
Maybe philosophy - I love talking about ideas. Or maybe art history. I was thinking about psychology, then I got really afraid because everybody says it's terribly boring.
My character was kidnapped by the Terminator and I was kidnapped by the Terminator production.
There's certainly something very uncomfortable about the voyeurism involved in being in the press, being an actor, where people have a seemingly insatiable curiosity about, you.
You know, let a few years go by until I hit my midlife crisis. Then that can be documented on film.
You don't realize how useful a therapist is until you see yourself on e and discover you have more problems than you ever dreamed of.
I really have never been concerned about being beautiful on-screen. That's just not my jam.
Narciso Rodriguez was my first fashion big brother. He made my wedding dress, which was wonderful.
Oh, I'm full of fear. I care about things; therefore, I have fears. I like to think that I'm brave, which is different. Brave means you're able to admit that you care. If you care, you are vulnerable.
