The only thing that I know is that, growing up, I came across stumbling blocks, and I always said to myself, 'If I ever get into a position to do something about this, I would like to, so that somebody does not deal with what I went through.'

When I signed my contract to be in 'Grease 2,' my agent said, 'Well, she's going to have a number.' So I did! They wrote me a number where I was teaching Maxwell Caulfield how to be cool. It was called 'Cool Rider.' And it ain't in the movie.

I was 16. In the middle of the night, I took a taxi to the Detroit train station - or maybe it was the Pontiac train station? - and got on a train to Chicago, then transferred to a train to San Diego where my boyfriend was living at the time.

I've always known that I'll have a career for the rest of my life because they'll always make movies about men, and men need women in their lives. But, when it comes to telling a woman's story, they're complex, circular, and not genre-driven.

In Australia I was seen as somebody who did only very modern, contemporary stuff. Then as soon as I went overseas I did two period pieces so it was like, 'When are you going to get out of the corsets?' And I was thinking I just got into them!

Subletting is great. You get to try on all these different versions of yourself. This apartment was clearly decorated by an artist - there's a great, big, huge chandelier and red fur rug, and it's all stuff that I would never, ever, ever buy.

I had a baby at 19 and was a grandmother by 39. Now, my children lend me their children to take them off to Brittany. It's divine. I'm quite exceptionally lucky. I've never had a week without having all three of my daughters on the telephone.

I colour my hair mousy brown and I wear makeup only on stage. I use Laura Mercier - something called Biscuit, I think. I run one tiny sponge over my face and cover the red blotches. If I've got some rouge, I'll bung it on my mouth and cheeks.

I bizarrely think that this [Sin City] is the perfect date movie. If a guy took me on a date to see this movie, I would marry him, for sure. It's bad-ass chicks and rad dudes, who are sexy, all over the place, and there's so much cool action.

Every time an actress is celebrated for her great work, I cheer. For the more brilliant their performance, the more the audience demands stories about women... And as we all know: a great year for women in film, is just a great year for film.

To a female superhero her sexiness is not the most important thing about her, it's her mind, her spirit, and when I look at that character that to me is an example of characters that I like to play and I think it does a great thing for women.

I'm not a huge risk taker. I think that, for me, I take certain kinds of risks, but if you look at me, you wouldn't say I was a big risk taker. I'm not going to jump out of an airplane and parachute and things like that. That's not really me.

I was brought up not to be selfish or self-centered. So if you play somebody who isn't so lovable, you can play that person and no one will turn on you. I don't want to play that person in real life. Because then people won't like me so much.

Every parent craves for a child, and once their wishes come true, they feel that it's not possible for them to love anyone more that the first born. But the fact is, after you have the second issue, the feeling is, how can I not love the kid?

Pink is like the one color I say I hate, and yet somehow I end up wearing it. Like, Michael Kors sent me a pink dress, and I'm like: 'So beautiful!' And I'm wearing it telling him 'I hate pink, why am I wearing this? It's really nice though.'

All the Warner actors were real actors. They started in theater and led very straightforward lives - you never saw entourages around. The MGM girls were the glamour girls, and they always had the makeup and hair people with them and all that.

People break down after a couple of hours. All the defenses go down, and there's a kind of communication that if I spent 20 years in a living room with one of these people, I would never, never know as much about them as I do in that one day.

I do believe in listening to your mind as well that that you need to be smart about certain things, to protect yourself. You need a healthy mix of both really, but it's important not to think so much that you're not able to follow your heart.

You're over there in the corner either thinking about the dead dog or whatever, you're bringing up your personal life and you need the space, and then somebody throws you a joke. Especially if it's an emotional scene, you don't want the joke.

By the time May rolls around, I'm probably going to want to spend a month on an island. But if Steven Spielberg or Steven Soderbergh or any number of directors were to say 'Hey, there's this role, are you interested?' I'd be there in a flash.

It's phenomenally important to me that, if I'm going to be spending years on a project, I need to be interested in the whole thing. I'm not there to be on my own. And if I'm going to be with these people, I'd best be interested in their work.

Acting is not a lofty performance; it is simply the source of becoming and existing transparently. Acting, I find, is the art of frothing to the surface every raw and honest emotion. The moment an actor pretends, he loses his audience forever

When you get the role, it's 'cause you know exactly how to play it, and they know that the way you're playing it is exactly what they want. I never go with a role and say that I need to change anything about it. Otherwise, I wouldn't take it.

I think zombies are the great analogy for all of our fears about all of the scary things that happen on our planet, and the potential for scariness on our planet. Being chased by anyone or anything can be scary. It is just a big, fun analogy.

I attempt to surf. I'm not as good as anyone else in the water. I'm more like a beached whale. I just hang out on my board. I can ride, but I get too nervous unless I go with my boyfriend or my trainer. There are too many burly men out there!

The pageant movie I'm obsessed with is 'Miss Congeniality', hands down! I could quote everything from that movie. I love so many scenes, but I always find myself quoting the scene when Sandra Bullock goes, 'I really do just want world peace!'

When John Travolta had the opportunity to do The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, he brought me and a couple other people from the movie to just be the students and have some parts, because he wanted to help us out. I thought that was really sweet.

In terms of the frustration of my character, I suppose any teenager has probably gone through that, in terms of telling their parents, I want to do one thing, and their parent says no. I think parents sometimes forget that they were children.

As an actress, I never went to film school, and I think if I had gone to film school, I would have started with a great advantage. If you have a strong intent to do anything in life, you can do it, but it always helps to have formal training.

Beauty and fashion are not really local anymore. You really have to be a global citizen to know what trends are. Now, it's pretty much the same designers and the same kind of trends, whether I am in New York, Milan, or Mumbai - it's the same.

I really don't. I have truly eclectic taste in music and I seem to cycle through phases in terms of to what's inspiring me. I'll go from Beethoven to Sigur Ros; World Music, Brit-pop, Classic Rock, Blues/Jazz, even the odd bit of Heavy metal.

There are moments when you act that you actually disappear from your body, and that's amazing. That's better than any drug, I would imagine. People take drugs to disappear from themself, and that's what it feels like when you hit that moment.

I like that feeling in your brain when you've got seven things that you're holding in one moment-you heard that person cough, you heard that person laugh, you're also saying your line, you're also listening to the person who's talking to you.

I think film requires a lot more patience and concentration and each day you're keeping the entire picture in your head throughout a two to three month film shoot. Whereas TV, especially half hour, is like doing a play a week or live theater.

I love directors who aren't going back to the stereotypes, who are helping write and create roles for women that are not in the typical Hollywood box. I'm very, very interested in films that are going outside of stereotypical roles for women.

I love Chinese food, like steamed dim sum, and I can have noodles morning, noon and night, hot or cold. I like food that's very simple on the digestive system - I tend to keep it light. I love Japanese food too - sushi, sashimi and miso soup.

I completely agree that a sound sleep is the best beauty product. Sound sleep, one of the most important but underrated thing, helps to make you more beautiful. I can never understand how people work so hard that they miss out on their sleep.

The most beautiful women I know are passionate, curious, funny and have a deep sense of purpose and they are all over 70! Finding these qualities in myself, and celebrating them in other women is the starting place of being Gorgeous for Good.

A lot of actors talk about how much they love the people they work with, and that's true, to a certain extent, but Texas and I had a very strong bond, right from the beginning. I think Texas made a mental decision to just be on my side, 110%.

I don't think, there's no possible way for me, anyway, to play a character that I haven't found some sort of sublime compassion for and I related to Deborah on a way that almost, initially, almost in a way maybe someone in the audience might.

I grew up with my grandfather [Elia Kazan] being famous in a way that's not like Beyoncé, but famous in a relative way. It made me feel weird about the way that we treat people that are famous, and it made me feel weird about fame in general.

I have my way of dealing with lows in my career: I just go on a holiday. Coping with a failure of a film is like coping with a break-up. It's sad and heart-breaking, and it's not like I got over it right after my holiday; it took me some time.

While pursuing my Bachelors with Psychology in Sophia College, I auditioned for an advertisement for Fairever Face Cream. And to my surprise I was selected amongst the top contestant, which paved a way for me to take this profession sincerely.

I remember when we had to pick our major freshman year, I chose comparative religion. It came to me out of the blue. I am amazed at how interested I still am in those ideas, especially the way spirituality is expressed in the world and in art.

I've been doing a lot of work with my brilliant trainer Pat Manocchia, who has a gym called La Palestra. He's trained me for every big show I've done, every demanding 8-show week role that requires stamina, like 'Sunset Boulevard' and 'Gypsy.'

I think they should take everyone who works for The National Enquirer and the Star, and everyone who works for Us Weekly, and put them all to work looking for terrorists. I think they would find the terrorists. All of them. It would be genius!

Sometimes someone that is the villain in your life, when you look deeper and you think of what their issues are and why they behave like that and where they came from - they become less of a villain and more of someone that you can understand.

I am so excited to perform; I am so ready to perform; I love live performances! I think it's something so different from a track; live is just so unique and cool because the energy is just so different. I cannot wait to have live performances.

Even though I played national level badminton, I told my parents when I was in 10th that I was not interested in continuing. Being a model or actor fascinated me from a young age, and I even did a couple of ads when I was just eight years old.

It's only because I feel like such a philistine spending all that time in hair and makeup that I started to knit. I used to spend that time studying Italian and French. Then after I had two kids, my brain turned to mush and I took up knitting.

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