When you see the industry's fickleness so early on, you realise that you are only as good as your last release. It is all about your work. And that has set the way I look at my profession and what I do in my career.

As a Goodwill Ambassador for YouthAIDS, I've learned that the face of AIDS is increasingly young and female. By educating young people and empowering them to make the right choices we can stop the spread of HIV/AIDS

So, when the discussion about not using the term feminist came up at a conference workshop, I couldn't believe it. The more I listened, the more I felt the need to express my passion about my identity as a feminist.

Because America is such a big country, I can understand that if you don't travel you don't really understand what is going on. I get it. I tell myself I know all about America, but I don't; I know L.A. and New York.

After 'Life Unexpected' ended, I wanted to do something that was completely different from Lux and that show. I wanted to be able to keep my fans, but not have them confused about who I was or what my character was.

I have this prominent feature on my face - I don't know if you've noticed - but, well, they're my lips. They tend to walk into a room before I do because they're larger than average! So Chapstick's a big one for me.

I don't want to treat my little girl like she's made out of glass or wrap her in bubble wrap or anything! And I also don't want to be constantly correcting her or warning her. Or my least favorite, reprimanding her.

Comedy is the most difficult. Comic timing is something which you either have it in you, or you don't. You have to have a good sense of humour to be able to understand it. A split second can make you lose the punch.

We all have the same destiny. The difference is opening ourselves up to possibilities to joy, hope, and happiness along the way. Give yourself and others a chance to take advantage of what's out there and available.

My voice triggers people into recognising me, often at the weirdest times. If I'm in the theatre and talking while in line to go to the loo, the rest of the queue will turn around and say, 'Wait a minute. It's you.'

It was quite a thespian - 'thespy' - sort of household. My mum had a dance school, and my dad now works in a theatre, so I spent a lot of time going to see dance as a young child - it was just a part of who we were.

And the writers are good in that it's easy to memorize, and good writing has an innate rhythm to it. And I've always felt that it's easier to get in your head than writing that has very kind of mind busting moments.

It's not often that you get a chance in one role to do the glamour bit and then strip off all the makeup and reveal the real person beneath the façade. Usually, it's either a glamorous role or a raw, emotional role.

Once you have made the decision to do the film, once you have identified the desire and all the deep and personal, intimate, artistic reasons why you want to do the film, then it's more a matter of how to do things.

I think it's a very central tenet to it yes, it is. I can't bear it, I can't bear inequality, I can't bear bad behaviour to other people. I cannot bear it that people are mean to people who can't help what they are.

You know, she was a girl. She was a female. And she wasn't like, trying to compete in a man's world and she wasn't trying to be in a man's position, she was just who she was. And I think that was like, a good thing.

I think that the two of them have been doing this for a really long time and it is more like sport. Yes, they would love to find a lasting relationship, but it's not likely to happen the way they are going about it.

Actors are pulled in so many different directions that unless you both are absolutely into it through thick and thin and completely sure about each other, it's just hard. I've decided I'll never date an actor again.

I did research when I was pregnant with my first daughter and was horrified by the chemicals in products, even those meant for babies. I would have to go to 50 different places just to get my house and my kid clean.

For the most part, I was surprised by the representation of female characters onscreen. I do hope that when we include more female storytellers, we will have more of the women that I recognize in my day to day life.

For me, it's nice to have a character who can never find love and have that be the running theme, but I think when you open the door to a story line about relationships, you open the door to another realm of comedy.

I'd love to have a really flourishing vegetable garden, and I'd love to have a better area for a rose garden or a cutting garden, but I don't. You have to develop a garden in the way that it's meant to be developed.

I think I'm just proudest to be the lady who was asked to play Mary Poppins. She's such a wonderful character, and there's so much tremendous talent out there. So I feel very lucky to be the one who got to play her.

I got a manager, and I thought, since I was going out on auditions, I should do this for a living. Then there was this moment on set when I realized I was having a lot of fun, and I really wanted to do this forever.

There are people who have really high expectations for what we're doing. I have to not think about that so that I can be free and play around every day and not feel like I have to get it right. You want to be loose.

You can go to the Internet and know more than your mom in two seconds. It's crazy how fast teenagers have knowledge and information these days. So, I think it's harder to say, 'Your father and I know more than you.'

My agent sent me the script and I loved it. I wondered how they would turn me into a chimp. My agent said it would probably not entail to much time. Just some hair and make-up. I found out that it was not so simple.

I hope I'm thought of as not just a showbiz personality, but as someone who has lived a life and who has hopefully made a contribution to something along the way - someone who is a human being as well as an actress.

You know, growing up, I lived in a neighborhood in Long Island where there was basically one black family. And I remember hearing all the parents and the kids in the neighborhood say racist things about this family.

I would like to perform more in English. But there have to be many good things gathered for me to be willing to do a movie. I watch trailers of every new American movie and I'm, like, 'OK, I'm not missing anything!'

You can never be free from limitation until you are willing to recognize that you and you alone are responsible for what you are. After you have passed infancy you are not a victim of anything but your own thinking.

So many of my friends are older, and the people I work with are older. I guess I've gotten used to hearing people say, "Oh, you're so young," even though I never really agreed with that. Now I get their perspective.

My family keeps me sane. I try to talk to my mum every other day. After I get off the phone, I have a renewed sense of clarity, so I guess a problem shared is a problem lost. It's important to me to keep them close.

I was brought up by a Marxist rationalist stepfather, so I don't believe in the supernatural or religion or horoscopes, and the absolute nature of death is quite helpful for me. My husband was there, then he wasn't.

I used to have the most visceral response to having my photo taken. I felt like instantly bursting into tears and running out of the room. I hated all the attention, which is such a stupid thing for an actor to say.

I'm always on the road, and there's a very male-dominated energy where I am. There's that aggressive energy surrounding me, all the time. So, in personal peace and harmony, I've totally made a gazillion compromises.

There was a time during 'Gone Girl' that I'd come home, and I'd say, 'I get to be every part of being a woman in this role.' For me, I feel it much more as a springboard for the work I'm going to take on thereafter.

People get so burned out on hearing about sexism, but you know what? I would love to burn out on it. I would love to never talk about that again, but until we're all equal I shall have to fight, and remain fighting.

Sometimes I think on television, you use maybe a tenth of what you are able to do. So it’s nice to go, Well, I’m gonna take two months and reinvest in acting and storytelling. You don’t get to do that on television.

I would say the biggest risk I always take is going in front of a live audience. There's nothing more risky to do. You have to really leave yourself open to your own authenticity, and you find that out pretty quick.

I don't need to go onto Facebook and pretend to have friends I've never even met. To my mind, that kind of destroys the meaning of the word 'friend.' I take exception to that. Because I value and respect friendship.

I didn't want to be trapped in an idea of replicating other 'Star Trek' characters; especially Vulcans. But my love and I have Spock paraphernalia all over our house. He's an omnipresence in our lives, we adore him.

Even when you are playing someone who is real, you get their mannerisms and you get their little quirks, but, it still has to be something inside of you that connects with the role, or else you will not be any good.

I remember working on a show, and feeling so insecure about whether I looked attractive enough to do a love scene. It was weird because I couldn't understand why I wasn't feeling beautiful, even though I knew I was.

It was just this interesting, my first, the first time you hear your child in any way criticize 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.

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 think 'Sightseers' was a bit of an epiphany, a massive learning curve, and it gave me loads of confidence to go out there, and also to create a female character which is completely unexpected and defies convention.

Damon Lindelof is hypnotizing. His imagination is without limits, and Tom Perrotta, as well. You begin to just trust, completely, where the story is going, knowing that you're entirely safe in the truthfulness of it.

After I turned producer, people asked me, 'Why are you taking up production? You are still so young and doing well.' Just because an actress decides to make movies, do people assume that her career is not going well?

I always do stories that I believe in, characters that I find interesting, and directors who I want to work with. All these factors have contributed while making choices and continue to as an actor and as a producer.

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