My kids will be needing me a lot when they hit their teens. If I know anything about being a teenager. I need to be braced to be spending a lot of time with all six of them and making sure I can be there for when they go through everything.

Brad and I have never wanted our kids to be actors, but we also want them to be around film and be a part of Mommy and Daddy's life and for it not to be kept from them, either. We just want them to have a good, healthy relationship with it.

I've been fortunate in that I've been able to have that balance as an actress to be able to do the wild, fun action movies and also be allowed to do the dramas. Hopefully, if I'm able to keep that balance, I'd love to always try to do both.

I just started reading lots of books and then called the United Nations and asked if they could educate me. The more I got involved, the more I suddenly began to feel useful as a human being and felt like I was finally living as I should be.

I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don’t have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don't have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

I felt beautiful when I was in Cambodia for Tomb Raider. I was sweaty, and my hair was matted and all over the place. And I was happy and hot and accomplishing a lot and running around, and I could feel my heart beating, and I felt beautiful.

Obviously, there's a part of me that takes the world of violence and death very seriously. However, when it comes to protection, or when it comes to just the skill of shooting... I've gone to the range with sniper rifles and things like that.

With my family, I'm trying to raise them to have respect for all people and make friends around the world and feel at home with the world and really live a truly global life because I think it's what forms them and it's really important to me.

Women and girls are bearing the brunt of extremists that revel in treating them barbarically. This is inextricably linked to our overall failure to prevent and end conflicts worldwide, which is causing human suffering on an unprecedented level.

The interesting thing for me is that everybody felt that I was really wild when i was unbalanced and desperate to communicate something and didn't have a sense of purpose. But I've never been so crazy and wild as I am with my son or as I am now.

We need to be open minded to understand that there are lots of different levels of things going on and we shouldn't be so quick to judge - and certainly not to judge a whole race, a whole religion or a whole people - and a lot of that is going on.

Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I'm not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent - just like there's a side of me that's vulgar and violent.

There doesn't need to be a God for me. There's something in people that's spiritual, that's godlike. I don't feel like doing things just because people say things, but I also don't really know if it's better to just not believe in anything, either.

Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people's hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness. But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, and then take action.

If you don't get out of the box you've been raised in, you won't understand how much bigger the world is. You might never find out that you are useful for all the right reasons - and not all those stupid things that people tell you you're useful for.

I remember the days of auditioning and being nervous and so I really didn't want to make people have to jump through hoops to do auditions and be nervous and make them more nervous. I kind of wanted to hire everybody and find something for everybody.

It's angering that not everybody has signed this treaty to ban landmines. It's disgusting, it really is, because it is fact that (mines) hurt a high percentage of civilians. They're not effective in any other real way. They've enough weapons for war.

It doesn't take courage to drink too much and be wild or jump around. That doesn't take any kind of boldness, just riding a motorcycle or whatever the idea of being tough is. Tough is having four kids. Tough is committing to life and being disciplined.

In countries where people have to flee their homes because of persecution and violence, political solutions must be found, peace and tolerance restored, so that refugees can return home. In my experience, going home is the deepest wish of most refugees.

I think the global community always has a ... has a responsibility to any humanitarian crisis. And I think it's in our best interest to address a humanitarian crisis on this scale because displacement can can lead to a lot of instability and aggression.

It's probably not an accident that the films that I care about happen to be about issues that matter to me, stories that I want to tell. If you're going to spend two years of your life on something it has to matter to you, you have to be passionate about it.

People always slow down for a train wreck. It's like junk food. If you don't feel good about yourself, you want to read crap about other people, like gossip in high school. You don't understand why it's there, but somehow it makes a lot of people feel better.

I actually feel like women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn't complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don't have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children. That's hard.

I want to support other women because of the opportunities I've had - and I've had a lot of opportunities. What I try as a female director is to do the best job I can and, in the meantime, bring attention to as many other female directors and writers as I can.

I'm somebody who works within Cambodia, with Cambodians. I work alongside the artists and society to work from within, so that is the focus, and from that I hope everybody who believes in democracy, in certain freedoms, will get louder, will grow their voices.

What is it that turns people into artists? It often comes from some kind of pain or angst, a need to understand or express something. It very rarely comes from confidence, being raised by parents who want to hear what you have to say and wants to encourage you.

My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

Love one person, take care of them until you die. You know, raise kids. Have a good life. Be a good friend. And try to be completely who you are. And figure out what you personally love. And like go after it with everything you've got no matter how much it takes.

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It's like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I'd like to play strong women who are also very feminine.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we're able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

Violence against women and lack of intervention and man's inhumanity to man and this kind of atrocities are going on. These are big issues of our times, we must speak about them, we must learn how to better understand how these things happen so we can address them.

I love doing lesbian love scenes. Before I did my lesbian scenes in Gia, I talked to actresses who said love scenes are easier with another woman than a man. Bound's Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly said they'd lie there and discuss the sale at Barney's between takes.

The life changing moment for me what the first time I went to a war zone and that was Sierra Leone. I took two weeks, eleven years ago and I went. I wasn't an Ambassador or anything I just asked to go and I was allowed to go. It was like someone smacked me in the face.

I love directing, It means so much to me to direct stories about subject matter that I care deeply about. I can act in many things, and you can try to experience different characters, but to direct is years of your life and you have to really love it and believe in it.

I suppose I'm very aware of time and of memories and of enjoying life... not just doing the right thing and being a useful person, which I certainly wanna be and believe that I am. I hold onto my family really tight and try to be as good a woman as I can be in my life.

Im extremely honest, and I pride myself on it. I dont try to be shocking. Im playful, and I know when something Im saying is maybe shocking, but its just the truth, I never wanted to be scary to people or upsetting to people. I simply want to live the way I need to live.

There was a time when I was really going to give up acting-- right after Foxfire. I was trying to find characters with a certain strength and things going on, but I was always disappointed. Wallace was the first thing I did where I felt their ideas were better than mine.

I think I was probably able to flip characters in my head as if I was playing different roles in order to write the different people because you kind of have to be one person, and inhabit him and write from his voice and be her and write her voice. So I think that helped.

The moment you have a child, in an instant your life is not for you, and your life is completely, 100 percent dedicated to another human being, and they will always come first. It changes you forever. It changes your perspective, and it gives you a nice purpose and focus.

When I was little, like Maleficent, I was told that I was different - and I felt out of place, and too loud, too full of fire, never good at sitting still, never good at fitting in. And then one day I realized something, something I hope you all realize. Different is good.

I dropped my pants in a tattoo parlor in Amsterdam. I woke up in a waterbed with this funky-looking dragon with a blue tongue on my hip. I realized I made a mistake, so a few months later I got a cross to cover it. When my pants hang low, it looks like I'm wearing a dagger!

I am deeply grateful to the citizens of Sarajevo and the Sarajevo Canton assembly for bestowing upon me this incredible honor of citizenship. I am so proud to now be a part of such an extraordinary part of the world and fellow citizen to the people I deeply love and admire.

Children should be allowed to express themselves in whatever way they wish without anybody judging them because it is an important part of their growth... Society always has something to learn when it comes to the way we judge each other, label each other. We have far to go.

Brad [Pitt] and I have never wanted our kids to be actors. We've never talked about it. But, we also want them to be around film and be a part of mommy and daddy's life, and for it not to be kept from it either. We just want them to have a good, healthy relationship with it.

My mother was a full-time mother. She didn't have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences... everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving - she's better than me.

I had a lovely experience once in Africa working with the U.N. when a president of a country met me about refugee issues and said ‘What do you do?’ I said ‘I‘m an actor.’ He replied ‘I heard that was a very difficult job and might not be the smartest job to do.’ It was lovely.

I was absolutely never going to get pregnant. I never felt that it was the right thing to do. Now I wouldn't trade that experience for the world. It taught me a lot about life, just the process of it, and now we have three other beautiful children that wouldn't otherwise be here.

I have so many children. Half of mine are the ones that just must climb the tree, must climb the mountain, must get dirty, must jump off, flip into the pool sideways because it's just who they are. So you try to give them as much guidance and prepare them but they are who they are.

Actors spend a great deal of their time making films. And that doesn't mean that they're not educated. But we haven't gone to law school and we're not experts on policy. We're just people with a platform and an opinion. But that should never be enough, in my opinion, to be political.

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