It's just about keeping people who are close to me, near. It's important to have people around who love themselves, are true to themselves, who have their own hobbies and their world doesn't revolve around Hollywood.

I believe that dialogue is the key to breaking through our tendency to separate and isolate. Dialogue changes isolation and loneliness into connection and interdependence. This, I believe, is the essence of Buddhism.

I'm kind of a disciplined person but I don't take anything too seriously. And I think a lot of that had to do with the raising my parents gave me and my sister - Veronica Cartwright, who's an actress in her own right.

Forgiveness, in some cases, is a flipping miracle in the sense that you're fighting, and suddenly something happens. It's a kind of grace. Whether you believe in God or not, something happens, and it's transformative.

You can always tell a man's nationality by introducing him to a beautiful girl. An Englishman shakes her hand; a Frenchman kisses her hand; an American asks her for a date; and a Russian wires Moscow for instructions.

I feel there is a great sense of achievement coming from a non-filmy background. But when you are going through a low phase, you don't have anybody to advice you because your parents possibly can't advice you on that.

I'm horrible at quoting movies! Even my very favorites are not easily recalled or programmed to memory. When people start movie quoting around me, I'm that person who just smiles and then looks up the reference later.

Quite a lot of British women stop working when they have children, and that is rarely the case in Denmark. We have a very flat, structured way of approaching everything. Nobody's the boss. In a sense, we're all equal.

It's really about connecting to your own humanity and your own behaviors, and getting to a level of self-awareness so that you can have perspective and step outside of yourself and transform and become another person.

We did some cool wire work in 'The Pact' - they had me strapped to a harness underneath my shirt so they could fling me around the house and slam me into doors. I definitely got some bruises even with all the padding!

I have Bob Dylan lyrics on my ribs. I'm a diehard Dylan fan, and my dad and I joke that if I ever met him, I'd have him sign his name right under my tattoo and then I'd run to the parlor to get his signature tattooed.

I wish I looked more like my mother, but I think I look like my father. I wish I had one of those naturally beautiful faces. Or a more quirky face. I'm right down the middle: not interesting enough, not pretty enough.

I think to be a true style icon, you just have to dress yourself. There are so many actresses floating around who have people picking out their outfits for them; that's hard for me to wrap my head around or celebrate.

I'm frugal. It's often cheaper to take the subway. And I'm an environmentalist, which my mother instilled in me, so I really believe in public transportation. And finally, I love the proximity to people in the subway.

They yell at me to be dignified. But what are the dignified people like? The people who are held up as examples of me? They are snobs. Frightful snobs I'm a curiosity in Hollywood. I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!

I mangle phrases constantly. The other day I was chatting with my boyfriend and I said to him, 'He really sold him under the bus.' And he said, 'I think you meant 'threw him under the bus,' or 'sold him up the river.'

All of the people in L.A. are really nice, and it's sunny all the time. Plus, there's so much to do there. You can go hiking in the hills, you can go swimming in the ocean, you can go surfing... You can do everything.

I don't think I am a star; I consider myself like any other girl who is of my age. Others may be working in office and doing different jobs. Similarly I don't think I am doing something different... I am also working.

Did any agents ever put Diane Ladd up for some of the great parts, even though she always got great reviews? No! But do they put up the girlfriend of the studio executive who's gonna do them a favor later? You betcha.

I looked at films as a career from necessity but all I have really wanted is my home and children. The two things just do not work out together when one has to leave home at 5.30 am in the morning to go to the studio.

I did flirt with the idea of going to law school, but not for long. Maybe I'll play a lawyer one day - the beauty of acting is that you can try on so many different roles without having to commit to them in real life.

I just decided that I would not put my professional life on hold to raise children. I know that sounds selfish to a lot of people and I don't know if what I'm doing is the right thing. But that's the way I'm doing it.

I find it irresponsible to go, 'She's an actress, what does she know?' That means if you're a dentist, what do you know? If you're a lawyer, what do you know? It's our profession, it's what we do. It's not who we are.

I learned how to read in second grade, and I entered a summer contest at my local library in Chattanooga, Tennessee. If you read more books than anybody else, you got your Polaroid up on the bulletin board, and I did.

I think that the fact that we had a trans woman on the cover of 'Vanity Fair'... is only good for the trans community. I can't imagine that the more we talk about this that it's not just doing everybody a lot of good.

John [Cassavetes] loved actors. He gave them a lot of freedom. So if something came up that a certain actor just felt at the moment and said - that kind of improvisation he would accept. He gave very little direction.

I'm from northern Virginia, but I grew up next to the West Virginia border, so it was hills and farmland. We had that sense of adventure you get from growing up around old farmhouses and lazy, rolling hills, you know?

Firstly I did it in this huge theatre in Avignon, then to smaller places, then bigger places. You have to change the volume of the voice, give more or less. The way you have to relate to space makes it like sculpture.

We are not brain surgeons. We are not curing cancer. We are not finding the next cure for Alzheimer's. We are simply and merely entertainment. We take on and wear the masks of characters. That's what we're paid to do.

To make films is as boring as watching paint dry. You usually have to do tiny bits here and there. You go off waiting for lighting, you come back - the energy dies. You hope you can find someone who can keep it going.

I loved my baby dolls when I was a kid. I used to pray with them and say good night to each and every one of them because I didn't want their feelings to get hurt. I remember having that connection with my baby dolls.

Believe me, when I finish shooting 'Mad Men,' there's a huge chunk of time where I have a really hard time leaving my house without fake lashes on. Which is a complex because I'm not very good at applying fake lashes.

Having a daughter and a grandson, I certainly could relate to the fact that this child, who you simply dote on, being taken away from you at an early age, and every single kind of emotion you would have to go through.

Obviously, as an actor, you have to embrace your imagination all the time, but when you're doing one of these films, you have to embrace your most childlike imagination - a sense of wonder and uninhibited playfulness.

I actually had a week where I literally wrote four songs and all of them are on my album. But sometimes you'll go a week where you'll write songs and they never see the light of day. So that process takes a long time.

I went to film school, so I certainly know how to make things quickly and cheaply. But at the same time, I have the experience of working with Steve Starkey for three years. I watched him produce some gigantic movies.

When I first met Adèle I was like, ‘Wow, this girl has a strong character!’ She has something very free about her. I’m not used to it. Some actresses are too self-aware, they strike a pose. Adèle is a force of nature.

My instinct was that it was Sidney's childhood in the Bahamas that gave him the fearlessness to fight racism. So this documentary was a kind of rounding out of what had begun in that scene in In the Heat of the Night.

I was shy and didn't believe in myself, and I only bloomed when I was in theater during rehearsal. And that's how my family found out that that's where I needed to be, because that's where I felt the most comfortable.

In modelling or football, being 30 is very bad. But, for an actress, ageing is like wine. You taste better and better because your body, your mind, your feelings, all this is a tool and it's getting sharper with time.

I always envisioned working in film and in theater. Theater and film are not, they're not in any way substitutable. What I love about theater is so different from what I love about film, and I enjoy the craft of both.

If you've got people around you that are like, 'Oh, you're so good,' this and that, it becomes unhealthy. My friends are like, 'You look like a doofus.' I'm like, 'Thank you. Thank you for that.' It keeps me grounded.

TV is the only thing that's really alive, because it's happening as you go. You don't know the end, so another day brings a new life to it. Unlike a play, unlike a movie, where you know the beginning, middle, and end.

I do wish that I had gone to college, just for the simple fact that knowing more than one approach makes you more well-rounded. But I still can't say knowing what I know now, that I would have done it any differently.

To be joining 'The Hunger Games' family is such a thrill. It deserves the hype because it's well written, handles really big subject matter, but doesn't talk down to its audience. And then there's the romance element.

Hair is an issue for most women, and after washing, blow-drying, flat-ironing, curling, braiding, twisting and spending the time and money on it, who wants to mess it up by sweating and having to do it all over again?

I have great respect for actors like Jodie Foster and Natalie Portman who went to school the entire time they were acting. All I did was one small little independent film, and I realised I couldn't balance both lives.

Some directors can tell stories and it becomes very intimate and small, and it's almost like a secret. Some directors have the gift of finding a way to show it and tell the story, in a way that brings in the audience.

The thing is, when you see your old friends, you come face to face with yourself. I run into someone I've known for 40 or 50 years, and they're old. And I suddenly realize I'm old. It comes as an enormous shock to me.

To be an actor, you have to be self-obsessed, but when you are a filmmaker, you get a macro view. Every aspect of making the film is under your purview. And for me, that is a bigger turn-on than just being an actress.

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