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I went through a normal kind of late teens, early 20s drinking, but it was a choice I made, because I didn’t think it was very good for my life.
I am a Christian. I haven't really talked about that before. It is something very private. But I do pray and my beliefs are very important to me.
You have to excuse me because I AM a teenager, so I'm allowed to sound illiterate and make stupid comments like 'I'm not into hard-core feminism.'
I'm always in bed by 11 or 12 and people laugh all the time - they want me to hang out until two in the morning, but n-n-no, I need my nine hours.
I'm so glad I'm not 20 years old anymore. I was in a hurricane. I'm a lot calmer now. I don't cause destruction for myself and others everywhere I go.
I think the main reason a lot of child stars don't make it is that it's hard to see someone as cute and then all of a sudden see them as having more depth.
I really liked it. It was awesome - my first tabloid story. If you're going to have a tabloid story written about you, it might as well be with Johnny Depp.
I've been looking to do TV for a while. I've always done guest starring stuff. I've done a couple of multi-episode arcs, and I've always loved the experience.
To play someone who is who they are because of the happiness and contentedness that they've known in their life is interesting because of sort of how banal it is.
I want a Mini-Cooper because it's fuel efficient, emissions efficient and all that stuff. It's small and better for the environment. I think that will be my next car.
It's so normal for a teenager to dress in black -- and be real unhappy and stay in your room and say sarcastic things. How could something so normal be considered morbid?
I think that I need to work on being comfortable at being normal, everyday-ish on camera. Unlike a lot of actors, I think that's the thing that I'm not so comfortable with.
I have so much respect for Sam [L.Jackson] that if I had questions about anything, I would call and ask him if he agreed with me before I brought it up with Craig [Brewer].
Most people don't walk around knowing what other people think about them, and I don't think it's healthy to know what faceless strangers who you'll never meet say about you.
I hate the things they preach. They found a gimmick that sells. The fact that they're making money off all these teenage kids who actually believe in their message is disgusting.
I stand up for other people, I'm very protective of people around me. If I feel like somebody is getting a bad rap or being unfairly picked on, I will stand up for them, absolutely.
My sister discovered the Beatles when she was about 11 and I'm four years younger. So we had nothing but Beatles paraphernalia. Every night I fell asleep to a different Beatles album.
Doing films as an actor, you spend maybe 40 percent of the year doing your chosen profession. If you are on a successful TV show, you spend 80 percent of your year doing the thing you love.
If an audience doesn't get that [Black Snake Moan] is a movie about overcoming exploitation, it could come across as incredibly misogynistic. That would be the worst thing in the world for me.
The more that I can work in different mediums, the more I can grow, and learn from different actors and different types of actors and directors and different styles of acting and build a tool box.
It's Aslan, the lion from The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. It's a symbol of my hellish childhood. I struggled through my oppressive teenage years and when I turned 18 I escaped. Like Aslan I was finally free.
I loved the idea of doing something that has this misconception about what stewardesses were. And, I also love the idea that these girls were navigating a blatantly misogynistic society, with the girdle checks and make-up checks.
Every night I fell asleep to a different Beatles album. So I'm very familiar with the Beatles; Ringo was my favorite Beatle until I grew up and then changed. I made the switch over to George Harrison just in time to regain my cool.
That worries me an awful lot. If people misunderstand our intentions [in Black Snake Moan], especially regarding my character, then they're essentially exploiting an already exploited and abused woman. So it's a huge concern for me.
I think I'm better at playing difficult than I am at being normal. And to me that's something I'm working on now. I'm not really that difficult or complex a person, so it's interesting to me that it's just so much harder for me to play an everygirl.
We have so much pride in welcoming these passengers onto the plane, and they have so much pride in travel. It's something that I definitely always remember, when I'm playing a scene on the plane, just to imbue everything with that sense of excitement.
My dream role would probably be a psycho killer, because the whole thing I love about movies is that you get to do things you could never do in real life, and that would be my way of vicariously experiencing being a psycho killer. Also, it's incredibly romantic.
To be honest, I don't usually do very much research, especially if I'm working with a director who also wrote the screenplay. They've usually done a tonne of research. And they'll tell you about it from their perspective which is better than doing your own research.
I feel like some of the best talent is on TV right now, with the writing, acting and great directors. I've also been looking for the consistency of work that TV provides for you. And, I always thought it would be really interesting to live with a character for months, if not years.
One thing I noticed after being down in Mississippi for the shoot was that words like "God" and "Jesus" are used all the time, but they're not specifically referring to Jesus. It's sort of this accepted phraseology for love, or spirituality, or whatever it is you personally believe in.
When I was younger, I did self-mutilate. I'd be upset, so I'd do it, & it would calm me down. It's a horrible way to feel better. But there are two parts of your brain - one that really wants to destroy the other. & sometimes the idea of self-destruction is very romantic. I got over that.
I think I've had a fairly meandering career. Because I did start so young, I think that I've always chosen my parts based on what's interesting to me and what I think would be challenging or fun, or someone I've always wanted to work with or a place I've always wanted to work in or a topic.
I'm not perfect-looking and I don't say the right things, I'm a little different, nothing really special, but I guess I come across as a little more real to people and that comes through on the screen. I know I look young, but with the right make-up I can look older. I definitely feel older.
I've been to therapists my whole life. I find the less attention I pay to food, the healthier I am. Any obsession is dangerous. And a whole country that's obsessed with one thing, unless it's, like, jeans, it's very dangerous. Everyone's obsessed right now with carbohydrates in this country. It's ridiculous.
My sister and I shared a bedroom our entire lives and I believe she discovered the Beatles when she was about 11 and I'm four years younger. So from the age of 7 until 17 we had nothing but Beatles paraphernalia in our room, even those little stuffed Beatles that went on stands that are dressed as the Sgt. Pepper band.
We can use the romantic relationship as a microcosmic example. Until you really understand the other person and where they're coming from and you understand yourself and how you contribute to things, you can never make that relationship better. And I think sometimes people don't understand how much these things are related.
I think we need great artists making great work - women, men, whoever. I think what's great about TV now is there are so many different platforms that you can make really specific, specialized content. I wouldn't have gotten this part because I'm not really considered a "traditional romantic lead," so I created it for myself.
I think that we need to look at ourselves and look at the way women perpetuate misogyny. Because at a certain point you can't blame other people for things in your life. I've felt that most of the misogyny I've witnessed in my life - a lot of it, yes, it comes from men, but most of it professionally has come from other women.
We all have insecurities, and the thing that makes them crippling is that we all have the ability to blow them up into such huge issues in our minds, that we might as well have a facial deformity. It keeps us from really going out there and living our lives, and forgetting about hating yourself and just experiencing the world around you.
To Craig's [ Brewer] credit, I felt totally safe on the set [of Black Snake Moan] . And because I felt safe, Sam[L.Jackson] had to protect me. He got upset at all the physical stuff Craig wanted me to do. When I start doing stuff like that, all the screaming and running, I kinda go out of my head. I'm not necessarily in my own body anymore.
Working in television it's really great to be able to stick with a character for a long period of time. It's not like you have one shot, and that's it. You have more time, more room, an ability to reflect on your performance and the character and how much has really been shown, and what you'd like to see. It's nice. You have more breathing room.
I've done and said a lot of things when I was younger that I don't know if I even understood what I was doing or why I was doing it. There's a lot of compassion in understanding what people go through and even in trying to understand why a person would act the way they do. I was a very reactive person, and I did things that were just really bizarre; I don't think people understood it at all.
I’m not going to let my insecurities keep me from having a good time. I think that if you don’t loose your self-consciousness, you can’t really be present in a situation. For example, if you’re at The Louvre, but you’re thinking about how much you hate your jeans, you’re not really at The Louvre. So in your memory, when you look back, you’re always going to be like, “I was wearing those jeans I hated”. And you’re not going to remember anything else.
When I talk about feminism and what I think the women's movement needs more of, it's not to detract from anything going on - I think everything going on is fantastic - but there's this missing element. I think we could learn from our detractors a little bit because I feel like they have a plan, a better understanding of things than we necessarily do. You can't change things if you don't understand the other people involved. And if you don't understand yourself, you'll never change.
I think everybody who really wants to change things has to allow themselves to be angry in a constructive way, and you have to fully understand the thing you're trying to change. We really need to get serious about this now; there needs to be real, effective programs. I think there needs to be a little bit more strategy involved and a little more realism, to be pragmatic and realistic, looking at the way we as women contribute to the problem. Once the second half of the population stops doing it, it's going to end.