I am a person whose father had no religion but who went to the nuns for a couple of years. And I think I'm the same: On one hand, I pray; on the other hand, I don't believe. I am constantly between the two.

I don't see myself ever retiring, unless it's for something that I like better, and so far I like directing a lot but I don't see the necessity to retire from anything unless there's a really great alternative.

It's certainly what I like best about getting older. You're not up for grabs for criticism anymore. You make a decision, it's made, it's fine, you don't have to go back and rework it. You don't have to apologize.

During the four years I had spent in New York, I had achieved top status as a model and had worked for the best photographers and designers in the world. I had grown used to hearing that I was exotic and high-fashion.

If I were to have any sort of solid idea about which moments were God's manifestations, they would be those moments where one has practically nothing to do with what's going on. It's one of the best feelings in the world.

Of course drugs were fun. And that's what's so stupid about anti-drug campaigns; they don't admit that. I can't say I feel particularly scarred or lessened by my experimentation with drugs. They've gotten a very bad name.

I'm happy to do voice-overs. I always have a good time doing them. I like to explore vocal nuance and accents and different people, different personalities. In a way, it is a lot more freeing than having your face up there.

I get irritated when people counsel me on what I should do with my life, or tell me I should get married, or tell me what I should do. I think people have their role models for happiness and it helps if others fit into that.

Some people had fathers who were bankers or farmers, my father made films, that's how I saw it. As for the movie stars, they were just around, some of them were friends, others weren't, it was all just a part of my everyday life.

Beautiful things comfort; they bring a real clarity and ease. We have to continue to make our environments beautiful - it's sort of like a prayer. If you surround yourself with beautiful things, you have a better life - one with more oxygen.

I've always thought with relationships, that it's more about what you bring to the table than what you're going to get from it. It's very nice if you sit down and the cake appears. But if you go to the table expecting cake, then it's not so good.

I know certainly, when one job draws to a close, that I feel I'm simply never going to work again. No one will ever want me for anything ever again. I think that's a vulnerable moment in every actor's life, and it happens every time you finish a film.

I was very excited to do 'The Witches.' It was with one of my favorite directors, Nick Roeg, and I loved his work from 'Don't Look Now' and 'Eureka.' So I was very excited to work with him. The story was a very subversive fairy tale by Roald Dahl, and a fantastic part.

It would probably be very sensible to be in love with someone who was not in the arts and who wasn't so prone to ups and downs. When I think of people who aren't in the arts, I immediately think of politicians for some reason, and I would never want to be with a politician.

People often think that looking in the mirror is about narcissism. Children look at their reflection to see who they are. And they want to see what they can do with it, how plastic they can be, if they can touch their nose with their tongue, or what it looks like when they cross their eyes.

In 1969, when I was still living in London, I had gone with some friends to see 'Easy Rider' in a movie theater in Piccadilly Circus and had returned alone some days later to see it again. It was Jack's combination of ease and exuberance that had captured me from the moment he had come on-screen.

People say, "Why is it that you love to act?" And you want to say, "Well, most of acting is sitting in your trailer, either bored or worried about the scene coming up." A lot of it is about things you don't really like, so it's a wonder why acting is such a huge draw, why everyone loves it so much.

I spent quite a lot of time in front of the bathroom mirror. Nearby, there was a stack of books. My favorites were 'The Death of Manolete' and the cartoons of Charles Addams. I would pretend to be Morticia Addams. I was drawn to her. I used to pull my eyes back and see how I'd look with slanted eyelids.

The idea that women are actually getting some jobs - whoopee. I can't say that I celebrate it without a hint of cynicism, because I think of how easily things can drop away and go back to the same old routine of being a boys' show. But I think it's a wonderful thing that women are getting to direct more.

I was always reticent about taking offerings from my father, and I think it was maybe because I felt the caveat was that I had to give something back, and I didn't like that position. But I've never felt incumbent on anyone to kind of keep them lifted or to support them, necessarily. I do that by wish or by option.

There have been times when I wanted children and other times I've been grateful not to have them. I am a mess if I have to say goodbye to my dog for longer than five days. I don't know how I would deal with kissing my children as I left for work. I know there are women who are able to do that. I don't know if I could.

I was a lonely child. My brother Tony and I were never very close, neither as children nor as adults, but I was tightly bound to him. We were forced to be together because we were really quite alone. We were in the middle of the Irish countryside, in County Galway, in the West of Ireland, and we didn't see many other kids.

When you're in your twenties, you're made of expectations, and when they're shattered, you don't know how to behave. The fact is if you react really outraged, you fear that you'll get dropped and feel even more terrible. But there's only a certain amount you can put up with before you become obnoxious in your own eyes, right?

My father was extremely loving to me and funny and wise and understanding, and at other times extremely demanding, critical, calculating, exacting. When you're a young woman, I think you want to please a lot, so maybe you accept more of the criticism than you would as an older person. But criticism can be very wounding. It certainly was to me.

The nature of acting is that one is many characters and jumps from one skin to another as a way of life. Sometimes it's hard to know exactly what all of your characters think at the same time. Sometimes one of my characters overrules one of my other characters. I'm trying to get them all to harmonize. It's a hell of a job. It's like driving a coach.

The idea of being given things that you don't necessarily deserve was always a difficult one for me to negotiate, and so I really always felt that I had to prove myself. Being the daughter of a famous man I guess is more easy than being the daughter of a famous woman, but at the same time there was a sense of really, with me, of wanting to earn my own way.

Share This Page