My relationship with aging is cozy. I'm not trying to play 29 and holding on with white knuckles, you know?

I feel like I'm the most forgiven actress I can think of, probably because of this short memory people have!

All I know is it was incredible watching Robert Downey Jr. bring Chaplin to life. Talk about weight-lifting!

When I really young yet feeling very old, I offered up a lot of myself to the press; I knew it was good copy.

You are the age of your spine. You are as flexible as your spine. That transfers to other areas of your life.

You really can't take a cat and turn it into a dog, or try and get lemons off an apple tree, or what have you.

Americans are like Pac Man. We just eat our way through the day. There's always something going into the mouth.

I believe that the female perspective is a very healing and circumspect one, and we have a right to equal voice.

I've got a lot of mileage, and I love my mileage. I wouldn't trade a mile of that for a minute of being younger.

I want to sit down, and I want to laugh. Nothing works better for me than watching somebody slip on a banana peel.

I've always had this unresolved desire to prove that I could get a Ph.D., or contribute something else to the world.

When I was about seven, I started touring the globe as part of New York's La MaMa theater company - without my parents!

Are we asking terribly much of people to be curious and interested in the female experience from the female perspective?

I think the secret to happiness is having a Teflon soul. Whatever comes your way, you either let it slide or you cook with it.

When you're a young child, you pick a totem animal, and you just identify with it to the point of wishing you were that animal.

I'm fascinated by how Hollywood has changed since I started. Today it's about immediate delivery. There's less risk and less art.

I was so much more insecure at 19. Thank God. It would be really cruel if there were a 19-year-old walking around with my confidence.

Well, I didn't really admit that I anywhere until my daughter started school and I knew I couldn't pull up and leave when I felt like it.

Imagine if somebody said your nose is too big or your ears stick out. For me, it was my neck was too short. It stuck with me all my life.

I would say chemistry between two people is very powerful. You have to fight to keep it, but if you don't have it, you can't manufacture it.

The stage always terrified me. The live audience is just one thing I bewilderingly look back on and say, 'How did I ever participate in that?'

I grew up loving horses. I was relatively obsessed, starting with my rocking horse at age 2, all the way through my painting and drawing phase.

It's nice to have a pause to parent and to be more present at home, teaching them how to drive cars and navigate boys and all this sort of thing.

I don't want to live in a bubble, in my craft or in the world... I can't, I would be cheating myself out of my generation and the world we live in.

What happens between action and cut for me is a blur, I go almost into a whiteout, and then I see the film and I'm like, "Oh that's what I did? Cool!"

The weird thing about film, which I don't really care for, is that I'm always surprised when I see the film. One way or another, I'm always surprised.

If people knew what made hits they'd make more of them, so to have the illusion of control over one's career isn't something I can even pretend to have.

It's all so confusing and incestuous and curious, the trail that actors wander through in the course of their careers and how stories overlap. It's funny.

The largest room in the world is room for improvement. You know, some mornings my thighs are fat. Some days my hair looks great. That's the human condition.

Because that's what intimacy is: It's a willingness to be vulnerable, a willingness to bite my tongue and a willingness to set an example of what I believe in.

Every film is its own experience, its own planet, its own family. It seems infinite when you're working on it, and then it's suddenly very finite, and it's done.

When I was 12, all I wanted was to be good at school, and to do something admirable, something you can't take away from me because I'm not popular or beautiful enough.

Because I tend to kind of hide under the sheets when it comes to reality television. I've seen probably one episode of maybe five different shows, and that's about it.

I love the rebelliousness of snail mail, and I love anything that can arrive with a postage stamp. There's something about that person's breath and hands on the letter.

Oh, I'm just too chicken to experiment with my face and have it go wrong. I'm not saying I never will. But it's like, what scares you more? Getting old or looking weird?

I just enjoy going to the games, but if you're watching the Lakers play, it feels good to be rooting for the Lakers. You're on the winning end of things most of the time.

I bought into the myth that you are not complete without romantic love, without a mate. And it can really distract you from your goals. But sometimes you have to take a leap.

All the lessons are in nature. You look at the way rocks are formed - the wind and the water hitting them, shaping them, making them what they are. Things take time, you know?

There is something wonderful about coming to terms with time - that it is finite. You want to have as much joy in your life as possible, and you take responsibility for your own joy.

Some days I want to get the boob job, some days I want to get the eye lift. Then other days, I'm like, 'Absolutely not! Have some integrity!'... But it's all about what makes you happy.

I don't lie. I would never stuff my bra because it's going to come off and the truth is going to be revealed. I don't like that padding. I try to be completely - if not brutally - honest.

I'm a girl, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate greatness and the struggle of sports. My situation - and I've always said this, even in politics - is may the best man win. I'm not team-bound.

There's a voice inside children that knows right from wrong. I call it listening to your inner Jiminy Cricket. I tell my daughter, 'If you're thinking this is not the best idea, it probably isn't.'

I think certainly directing is a visual medium, but it's also about communication, and a lot of times great directors are lacking in communication skills, which is rather shocking to discover that.

I loved acting, I started as a child and it is interesting because I didn't compare myself to others that were doing the same thing. I just felt that I needed to stay focused and stay out of trouble.

One of my favorite parts of myself is my motherhood aspect, it just turned out to be the best thing about my life [Laughs], the most rewarding and deepening, so I have a delight in portraying mothers.

I think, certainly, directing is a visual medium, but it's also about communication, and a lot of times, great directors are lacking in communication skills, which is rather shocking to discover that.

I was, I think, extremely lucky, because the minute I saw my face plastered on 'Time' magazine in the subway with my mother, I just said, 'Wow.' And it made 'Time' magazine come down to life-size scale.

I think that directing is the ultimate martyred task of filmmaking, that it has nobility to it. It takes three years to make a film, for the most part. I think it requires the attentiveness of a mother hen.

I think fun is an important part of the entertainment industry, and it should be. Anybody who's not incorporating some of that into their work needs to take a break, go away, and have an attitude adjustment.

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