When I was 5, my mother threw a party, and a friend and I wrote and performed a play called The Dutch Doll.

I take the responsibility of choosing seriously because it becomes an indelible part of your body of work. Something has to sing to me.

When I was 5, my mother threw a party, and a friend and I wrote and performed a play called The Dutch Doll.

There are all kinds of other things I could do, things I would probably like, but only acting would give me emotional fulfillment.

I was offered one of the roles in a big project that shall remain nameless. I thought the whole thing encouraged violent sex crimes toward women. It made horrible, ghastly rape violence seem sexy. I just didn't want to sign my name to it.

My major in college was Chinese Studies. It was very intentional.

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.

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.

The Oscars have become such a big deal these days that it's just used as adjective.

I assume that if people get to know me, they'll like me. If they don't, it's not my problem.

Once you've found something you know how to do, it makes you feel you don't have to be intimidated by someone.

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.

I had been looking for a New York apartment, but I said, Why not give LA a go?

We all struggle with our failure to communicate and our failure to reach beyond fear to love people.

I have learned to pare down what I do and still be effective and strong in a role.

I could have seen myself going into academia, but I don't love it; I just like it.

I hope that doing truthful portrayals of people in a variety of circumstances gives people a kind of subterranean link to those characters.

My father taught me how to substitute realities.

Being is like pretending.

I'll talk to myself out loud a lot.

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.

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 want my life to effect the balance to the positive.

Sometimes I feel limited by people's perceptions of what I can and cannot do, or what I do or don't look like.

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 hate it when people use sex as a weapon against the people who are engaging in it. It's so hypocritical.

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.

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 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.

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 always feel I can play a role - just give me the time to do the preparation and I'll be it.

Acting is what happens on the way.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Depending on what day of the week it is and what time of the month it is, I'm a good friend or not a good friend. I'm more or less a good mom or not a good mom, more or less a good mate or not a good mate. That's just life, whether or not you're public.

In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.

My desk, most loyal friend thank you. You've been with me on every road I've taken. My scar and my protection.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

That friend a great man's ruin strongly checks, who rails into his belief all his defects.

The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own.

The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.

When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.

For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.

Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.