Whatever character you play, it gives you the chance to expose another side of yourself that maybe you've never felt comfortable with, or never knew about.

I'm lucky enough that directors sometimes seek me out for little projects that people don't even know about, that just surface later on.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

My mother opened a bank account for me when I made $60 on my first day of work as an extra. She's that kind of mother.

I was raised by an actress, and I watched all those women turn 60 and ask, Shouldn't get face work? My mother and Anne Bancroft said, We're not going to fall into that.

I hope we can be consummate artists as women or revolutionaries, or whatever women want to be, and also have love, not only for ourselves but from a partner.

I really don't consider myself to be a conventional Hollywood star. I've never really been marketed by the big studios to do mass market box office films.

I knew you had to go in and audition and maybe they'd hire you, and that's where you start. I had a good understanding about press: that it's the actor's responsibility to publicize his or her films.

Luckily, I was raised by people who'd already seen all the yuck stuff, which is why they originally didn't want me to act. I understood the difference between getting a part at a Hollywood party and getting a job.

Unfortunately, overall, movies are a conglomerate. People buy and sell people in this business, which can get really ugly.

There's something so accessible about heroes who have faults.

Wild at Heart made a few people angry-they thought I was exploiting women by showing that when a woman says no she really means yes.

It would be great to make a movie that had the style of a great '30's film.

The really courageous and bold thing is to make movies about human behaviour.

When man decides he can control nature, he's in deep trouble.

It's always been a desire of mine to work with my parents.

I don't turn my nose up at anything. If it's a great part, it's a great part. I'd love to do a box-office hit.

I wanted to go to Jupiter. That was my plan from day one, and David Lynch gave me the ticket.

It's a strange world, as David Lynch would say.

I made a commitment to myself; that I wanted to be an actress, and I wanted to do films that make a difference. It has to move people.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is one of the greatest films of all time.

I've always loved film more than theater.

I'm interested in flawed protagonists. I was raised on them.

That's life - to turn each other on, to feel good, to feel in love.

I like movies about longing and desperation, and dark and light things, stories about people struggling to raise children, and to have relationships and be intimate with each other.

We like our archetypes and heroes to be what they are at face value. And life doesn't work out like that.

There's always a side of a woman that likes a man from the other side of the tracks.

Whatever character you play, it gives you the chance to expose another side of yourself that maybe you've never felt comfortable with, or never knew about.

It's really fun to act like a bimbo. But it's fun to act like a bimbo only when people know that you really aren't one.

'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' is one of the greatest films of all time.

A lot of people have asked whether acting is in my genes. I don't know if anyone is born to act. And it certainly wasn't pushed on me. It was something I wanted to do.

All I can start with is what moves me and feels like a great challenge as an actor and I think is saying something unusual or irreverent or human - honest in some way.

Any journey of a creative person has, you know, really unusual challenges and years where you don't work and years where you work.

Anybody you make a movie with when you're 12 and they're 14, you're going to know them your whole life.

As an actor, you're not kind of thinking about your own work or watching the movie for the first time.

At the end of the day, you have to sit with the scripts and decide where your heart is.

Ben Stiller, who I love and who is a friend and is such an incredible actor - he's hilarious, obviously, but I thought his performance in 'Greenberg' was extraordinary.

Decision-making is very scary for me.

Every role is a new form of surrender.

Everything's cyclical. Having been raised by actors, I watched their careers, and the challenge is to take time off.

For me, the greatest good fortune I have being raised by actors is I came in knowing that a career is the ebb and flow.

For people who feel things in an enormous way, it's pretty hard to live in this world.

God bless nannies.

Growth doesn't hurt. This is what I've learned. In the end, it doesn't hurt. It hurts while it's happening. But in the end, you know, for life, for parenting, and for the arts, it's not a bad - not a bad thing to try for.

Having egregious divorces - where you just hate each other - is really the easy way out.

I always wanted to do a 'Ms. Smith Goes to Washington.'

I always wondered what it would be like to have a normal childhood.

I don't think you have to be in these serious, heavy, independent little movies to be an actor. Some of the most interesting acting I've seen is on cable television.

I don't want to mess with my face. So I'm becoming fluent in French so I can go to France and make French films when I'm 60.