I have to be able to shake my imaginary life from my real life when I walk through the door with my children who immediately need a lot from me. It's actually kind of a relief, especially if it was a dark day on set.
I hope that doing truthful portrayals of people in a variety of circumstances gives people a kind of subterranean link to those characters.
Once you've found something you know how to do, it makes you feel you don't have to be intimidated by someone.
You know how in high school you do these plays and people come up after the show and they're really excited for you? Well, that's what's happening to me right now.
Now that I've got some films under my belt, I have the courage of my convictions regarding acting. It gives me a leg to stand on.
I had a Christian upbringing - it was all about sin and guilt. I was very happy just kissing people. I was like the make-out queen - not even second base.
There's a side of my personality that goes completely against the educated & serious woman. The side who wants to be a pin-up girl in garages all across America!
My father taught me how to substitute realities.
It's the relationships between people that are more important than the sort of far away fantasies of what the good life is, the world of supermodels and Bud ads.
The name game is frustrating. Agents will say, They love you, but they're going to offer it to Julia Roberts first.
Being is like pretending.
I take the responsibility of choosing seriously because it becomes an indelible part of your body of work. Something has to sing to me.
I have learned to pare down what I do and still be effective and strong in a role.
There are all kinds of other things I could do, things I would probably like, but only acting would give me emotional fulfillment.
When I was 5, my mother threw a party, and a friend and I wrote and performed a play called The Dutch Doll.
The Oscars have become such a big deal these days that it's just used as adjective.
Sometimes I feel limited by people's perceptions of what I can and cannot do, or what I do or don't look like.
My major in college was Chinese Studies. It was very intentional.
I'll talk to myself out loud a lot.
I'm doing things that are more artistic again, more close to the material that I love. I don't disparage those things that I did. They're just not as much reflective of who I am.
I wanted to do something far from my intellectual and physical home, so I went to live in Beijing for eight months and took Mandarin Chinese.
I try to become more humble and more myself with every year. There was a while when I got famous where I was so confused and my head was spinning.
Acting is what happens on the way.
Acting is doing, because everything you say or do is some kind of an action, some kind of a verb. You're always connected to the other person through some kind of action.
I could have seen myself going into academia, but I don't love it; I just like it.
I had started off, before I ever got an acting job, working at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions as a reader. I was always interested in that side of the camera.
I always feel I can play a role - just give me the time to do the preparation and I'll be it.
I have a hard time getting motivated to do something that seems like a career move. I've gotten into vague trouble with my agents for turning down work that I thought was exploitative.
I had been looking for a New York apartment, but I said, Why not give LA a go?
I assume that if people get to know me, they'll like me. If they don't, it's not my problem.
There was something about being in front of audiences when I was in elementary school plays that gave me a thrill. It was like the rush you get from a roller coaster drop.
I want my life to effect the balance to the positive.
We all struggle with our failure to communicate and our failure to reach beyond fear to love people.
No, this is not what a fair God would do. And why does it not say anywhere in the Bible that slavery is wrong? It only says that you should treat your slaves well. Well, I don't care if you treat them well. How is it possible that it is not immoral to own another person? Why isn't that one of the Ten Commandments? 'Thou shalt not own another person.' You want to sit here and tell me that fornication is worse than owning someone?
More is spent in a single month [in the U.S.] fighting the war on drugs than all monies ever expended domestically or internationally fighting slavery from its inception. Per month, we spend more on the drug war than we ever have trying to free slaves.
Primary and especially secondary education is extremely important in preventing trafficking, it allows children to develop critical thinking skills to be able to defend themselves from traffickers and to have the skills that will enable them to have gainful employment to be able to support their families in other ways than being sexually exploited.
As a youth, I hated myself for not being good enough. All my inadequacies and failures, not being kind enough, generous or understanding enough, would assail me at night. It became a habit to be guilty and self castigating, not liking myself because I was unworthy... I really tortured myself.
[My choice about scripts] is just a question of what I fall in love with. You have to use some kind of instinct meter about it. I think I'm getting closer to my instincts now. I don't think there needs to be a plan. I think there needs to be love. I think you need to love what you're doing and then the rest is anybody's guess.
One of the hugest ways that will make an impact, which is only in its infancy right now, is corporate accountability. Consumers at the buying point saying, 'Can you certify to me that this product is slavery-free?' And most cannot right now.
