And I'm hoping that over the next 20, 50 years, whatever, the mystique of television and film and all that will diminish somewhat, and people will leave us alone to get on with our jobs.

I mean, I don't necessarily want to leave because I have this job, but I would love to do a good play.

Jean's whole job is to protect Victoria. Jean is a very practical, very orderly, very disciplined person; she is the personality called the gatekeeper.

And I'm hoping that over the next 20, 50 years, whatever, the mystique of television and film and all that will diminish somewhat, and people will leave us alone to get on with our jobs.

I haven't been on the stage in a long time.

I've obviously made a very nice amount of money. I have a very nice lifestyle. I get to do what I love. Very few actors get to do that, and even fewer are lucky enough to work steadily for 24 years.

And at five o'clock in the morning we left to drive to Old Tucson, and I sat with my mouth open in the van. I was stunned by the beauty of that country.

I was actually very pleased that they let me do it, because I feel very deeply for breast cancer survivors. I don't have it, but it is in my family. I've always been very aware of it. I go for mammograms and checkups.

Brian really kicked back on his own when Amanda was a baby. We had a long talk about it, and he was spending a lot of time in California working there and he didn't really want to spend all his time out there and have his children and his wife on the East Coast.

Fame an fortune are nothing if you're not happy and healthy.

Daytime has been successful all these years because it caters to a very real need in the audience - to see something that's not nighttime fantasy. People watch daytime because it's like their lives.

I might be doing a lot more theater, which is kind of what I love, but there's simply no time for.

But also, it's a wonderful thing for children to see the birthing of puppies, to see nature at its best when it works and to have the experience of the puppies.

We owned a bearded collie for many years. Sophie. She was old, and she died last year.

I think it's a mother's dream come true to see it work out that way. Not just the mother, but certainly parents, to know that their children have a very solid moral foundation and religious foundation.

My parents had a wonderful marriage, but it was a very dependent relationship. My mother was entirely dependent on my father because that's how it was in those days.

Oh, God, I would love to go and do a play someplace.

My daughter is a freshman in college and my son is - well, our daughter and our son - is a sophomore in college. So they come home on selected weekends, they come home on vacations and they're home in the summer, although they have jobs.

If you have ever been in a real tragic or sad situation, the words that come out are hopelessly inadequate and kind of cliched.

You know, if you think about it, the most powerful people on this earth probably never raise their voices - they just say it and people hop to, because they have that power.

The worst storyline I've ever been involved in I wasn't involved in, because I was clever enough to get pregnant with my second child and they wrote me out and they replaced me with Christine Jones. And thank God - that was the worst storyline.

Very few people run around and get amnesia and have comas and come out of them and do all the silly of people have strokes and have comas and come out of them and do all the silly things we do on soaps.

There are lots of people in the world who do have the advantage of going to a good drama school and just decide that they want to be actors. There's nothing wrong with an untrained actor; they have to get their training somehow, they have to learn.

I have this personal affinity for the desert. I am fascinated by the desert. I love it.

My husband gave up all his work to stay at home with the kids, and we split all the duties at home. I do all the boring stuff - like pay the bills, and he does all the exercising for both of us, which I'm very grateful for... I thank him for it regularly.

If you have ever been in a real tragic or sad situation, the words that come out are hopelessly inadequate and kind of cliched.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I have a movie coming out called Spun, which will be at the Toronto Film Fest.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

My advice to young film-makers is this: don't follow trends, start them!

The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide.

It's really rare for film directors to be that interested in things other than themselves.

When I said I was going to audition for a film, I got a hearty laugh from all my family.