If I am not confident that I can portray the character perfectly on screen, I won't even try.

I'm never so sure as I was in my mid-20s.

Obsession is an attractive thing. People who are really, really interested and good at one thing and smart are attractive, if they're men.

America doesn't reward people of my age, either in day-to-day life or for their performances.

Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.

It is well that the earth is round that we do not see too far ahead.

Sometimes with my children, I remember exactly how I felt as the child in this situation, not just how it feels to be me.

There are wonderfully talented actresses. It's a really rich field. There isn't as rich a field of material.

There's no road map on how to raise a family: it's always an enormous negotiation.

My job is usually to express emotion as freely as possible.

I had this sort of idolatry for certain actors who preceded me, people who inspired me, so I'm honored to be that way for young actors.

Show business has been really, really good to me because I can work and take a lot of time off, and I'm extremely undisciplined person.

I can't stand most things that I see.

Some people are filled by compassion and a desire to do good, and some simply don't think anything's going to make a difference.

I need to go where people are serious about acting.

I have a very busy life, and not many people who have a career and four kids go out a lot to the movies.

Every single decision I make about what material I do, what I'm putting out in the world, is because of my children.

The work will stand, no matter what.

You just have to keep on doing what you do. It's the lesson I get from my husband; he just says, Keep going. Start by starting.

You win an Oscar, it can double the audience that you had before.

I'm thrilled when I get nominated. I don't count how many and I don't remember how many I've had. I just know it's a lot.

The work is the most fun; it seems illicit how much fun it is.

Chris Cooper is one of my favorite actors in the world. I've seen him in most everything he's done.

All that attention to the perfect lighting, the perfect this, the perfect that, I find terribly annoying.

I don't know why I don't watch a lot of movies; I can barely keep up with the things my friends are in. There isn't enough time in life.

I didn't have any confidence in my beauty when I was young. I felt like a character actress, and I still do.

My feeling about fears is, if you voice your fears, they may come true. I'm superstitious enough to believe that.

Instant gratification is not soon enough.

The progression of roles you take strings together a portrait of an actor, but it's a completely random process.

There are improbable things suspended in space, like the earth.

Expensive clothes are a waste of money.

I couldn't care less about fashion. If I had taken any clothes home, they would have remained in my closet for the rest of their existence.

I don't like to be gone all weekend and at night too. Because for 20 years, I've had children who are in school.

I have a holistic need to work and to have huge ties of love in my life. I can't imagine eschewing one for the other.

Everything we say signifies; everything counts, that we put out into the world. It impacts on kids, it impacts on the zeitgeist of the time.

Personality is immediately apparent, from birth, and I don't think it really changes.

All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene.

I get a trickling few scripts that I'm lucky enough that some of them are great. I don't get loads of scripts.

Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.

My family really does come first. It always did and always will.

I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you.

I have four to five months, tops, per year to give to my acting work.

You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing.

People say, When you have children, everything changes. But maybe things are awakened that were already there.

Integrate what you believe in every single area of your life. Take your heart to work and ask the most and best of everybody else, too.

I have a very good life - I'm lucky enough not to be deprived.

How you first meet the public is how the industry sees you. You can't argue with them. That's their perception.

I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern with my looks as they pertained to my work.

The more you are in this business, the more humbled by it you become.