Really it was the first time in my life that I recognised that acting is, I'm just going to say it, I am an artist, I have to do this, I have to do this.

People don't know this, but early in your career, you don't just glide on to The Tonight Show.

Really it was the first time in my life that I recognised that acting is, I'm just going to say it, I am an artist, I have to do this, I have to do this.

I'm not a huge fan of my work.

I have always loathed working out.

At one point, I had 14 pairs of golf shoes.

Sometimes, I feel that Manhattan in particular has gotten really tame and gentrified or something.

I don't think, there's no possible way for me, anyway, to play a character that I haven't found some sort of sublime compassion for and I related to Deborah on a way that almost, initially, almost in a way maybe someone in the audience might.

I dress up for awards, but only if somebody else is going to pay for the clothes. And shop for them, too!

Well, I think again, the worst part of it was just leading up to it, before we got on set, at least for me... dreading this idea that I was just going to suck and I really had strong feelings about that. I just didn't want to be that weak link.

Shopping turns me off.

Yes, I guess I am bi-coastal.

Acting doesn't feel good. It's not comfortable to feel all this stuff, it's not.

But I've never looked at myself as being particularly funny.

The one thing I think you must do is, as painful as it is as a parent, is listen.

I've been in a gym probably nine days of my life.

And I thought, you know, I have to say that maybe the whacked out mother is my new favorite role, but I don't want to just do it and become Nurse Ratchett.

I'm not quite ready for a no makeup movie.

I just mean it's very difficult for me to watch my work, in some ways, because I am critical of what I didn't get across or I thought I was making one point.

Well what I will tell you is for this movie, I got into probably the best shape of my life.

But I can tell you that the New York that I see now is not the New York that we grew up in. It's not 1973.

First of all, returning from motherhood, I was looking for something lighter, and I wasn't as much attracted to Kate as I was to the relationship between the two people.

If I swim in the ocean, I have a shark thought. Not a bad one, but just a little one.

I was desperate to go back to New York and when 9/11 happened, I feared moving to the bulls-eye and that was very hard because I have a lot of family there and I really had to question what I didn't like about this community.

It was just this interesting, my first, the first time you hear your child in any way criticise you. It's the worst review of your life and it's really relieving to find out that they don't know what they're saying.

I live by a hill. I began walking it and then I began jogging it and then I began sprinting it.

Jim Brooks is a very powerful director and it was a lot of intense work.

I don't mean to be presumptuous that men don't feel this, I don't mean this, but I found that when my child was born, my first child, it felt like my heart broke.

Well, I don't find glamour and clothing relevant.

It's kind of fun to be sexy.

I was one of the most brilliant liars as a child.

It was always part of the plan to move into acting.

Be where the acting is. I live in Houston. Dallas is 4 1/2 hours away. I let them know there's no difference.

My mother keeps things in perspective for me. She makes me realize that the acting I do and love is no more important than what one of my brothers does-he works in a shoe repair shop. If my career ever tapers off, I'll go to college.

In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.

I think acting is about forgetting yourself in order to give the best of yourself. It's passing through you more than you're creating it. You're not the flower, but the vase which holds the flower.

In LA, too many people want to go the quickest route from A to B. Method acting offers them that.

I don't see it as a form of healing, because if you have wounds that are bleeding I don't think acting will ever get them to stop. But I find acting is a form of illumination.

Maybe I can't act, but I know the gimmicks. I studied acting all my life and know what's good for me.

I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.

I'm not acting, but I am acting.

I've done a lot of acting. I'm not saying I'm the greatest, but I'd love to act, I'd love to sing.

I had a bonding problem when I went off and boxed for five years. I was over in Europe and Asia fighting because I wanted to do something different; I was tired of acting. But the thing is, when I was done doing that, I couldn't get a job.

Acting for me is not that quid pro quo.

If you're acting, then there's a prescribed way to behave; whereas in life there's no prescribed way. So acting feels like a comfortable way to get through the day.

When I was a kid, the idea of why I wanted acting to be the thing I do for the rest of my life was different. It was, Oh yeah, I'll get girls and be famous.

And then, I suppose, there's also a cinematic reality on top of that. Because it was extremely difficult to keep tabs on, it was quite confusing acting that.

I read. It's also nice for me to get involved in schoolwork, which is a totally different world than acting. It makes me feel like I am doing things that normal people are doing at my age.

It's a living, breathing thing, acting.