It's unlikely I'll ever submit to a psychiatrist's couch. I don't want some stranger prowling around through my psyche, monkeying with my id. I don't need an analyst to tell me that I have never had any sense of security. Who has?

I have a place in New England. It's in the middle of nowhere, like horror movie style - Stephen King-ville. It's a good kind of retreat for me to regroup my thoughts and work. I split time: 50 percent there, 50 percent in New York

When you're single, you're very independent. Very independent women raised me. We didn't have a lot of male figures as the head of our household, so I got, and took on, a lot of that strong spirit from the matriarchs in my family.

What bothers me is that the cinema - what Fox News calls the "wholesome cinema that our children are supposed to be able to see" - is so violent. I'm not even talking about the content. I'm talking about the way in which it's cut.

I'm very happy with my lot. I like the variety I get. You don't want to spend your life repeating yourself. It's true of any kind of artist, you want to explore as wide and far as you can go, so that's what I've been trying to do.

Here is my wish and my desire and my pledge as well: that we remember our true nature and our womanhood. That we own and know that we are more than our bodies and yet our bodies are these sacred, beautiful, rhythmic houses for us.

Worrying won't prevent the worst outcome. I've learned to live in the moment, which is not my natural tendency. I've always thought that if I worried about something enough, it wouldn't happen. I forgot to worry about Parkinson's.

Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It’s always the unspoken word and what’s happening behind someone’s eyes that makes it so rich.

I feel at home in Shondaland. I feel a lot of things at Shondaland, but one of the things I feel that I haven't felt before is at home. I feel accepted for who I am and acknowledged for who I am. I feel like my ideas are embraced.

Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It's always the unspoken word and what's happening behind someone's eyes that makes it so rich.

What I remember about the experience is that if you went to go see 'Born On The Fourth Of July' and you happened to take a bathroom break real quick or grab some popcorn, you probably missed me. It was short, but it was memorable.

I don't think men like a bad girl. Well, I haven't had a date in a year so I'm obviously doing something wrong. It's not that my standards are too high, I haven't even been asked out in a year. I have no standards, anyone, please!

I don't blame other people for the rap that Christians have. A lot of Christians are just mental. A lot of Christians are more concerned with telling you where you're gonna go when you die than what you can have while you're here.

I love it when you like a character, and then she does something you don't like, and you hate her for a while - then you love her again. I'd like to see her have unlikable moments that the audience understands and sympathizes with.

I acted out a lot. I was very nerdy. I was very isolated, which I made up for by kind of talking and trying to entertain people and get them to like me, so I did theatre and improv in high school and college, but always as a hobby.

Growing up, others girls wanted to dance and help their mums with the cooking. I liked to play soccer with the boys. Or I'd be off on my own, tilting mirrors towards the sun in order to burn armies of ants. That was my idea of fun.

A lot of nudity in my early movies was out of necessity. When I came out to Hollywood, I didn't know anybody, I didn't have any connections. I did what a lot of people have to do in the real world, and just work up from the bottom.

I like to just make things... If I have the TV on, I'm not just going to sit there. I want to do something with my hands; I've always got a project. Or I get a small group of people over, and I say, 'Let's make these things today.'

I'm thinking about directing, but I know it's a lot of work and I appreciate what directors do and I would like to be good at it. The opportunity has presented itself four to five times, and I usually said no because of the script.

People are incredibly literal sometimes in how they view you. You have dark hair and pale skin? You must be brooding. The second you dye your hair blond and get a spray tan, people treat you as if you're a bit stupider and happier.

Everyone is usually screwed up in some way and that is usually where the work comes in - figuring out how to make it believable and make it real to present someone's problems that you don't necessarily actually know anything about.

I loved Catwoman's sense of humor. I love how sly she is. I love how she, to use a cat metaphor, walks the fence and you don't know which side she's going to come down on. She's totally independent. And let's face it, she's badass.

I have always let the lack of Indian actors in the industry drive me, not hold me back. I remember an agent in L.A. telling me a few years ago that an Indian actor wouldn't ever make it in Hollywood, but my ethnicity has helped me.

That was an amazing time period [ CBGB filming] to transport to during filming - the clothes, the music, the lifestyle - it really helps to get into character when there's so much that changes from the moment you step onto the set.

I had done a bunch of stuff before I even went to Disney. I'm so grateful for what Disney gave me and the experiences that I got, but at the end of the day, I can do so much more than what I did on that channel and in those movies.

I suffered, I really suffered, with all three of my husbands. And I tried damn hard with all three, starting each marriage certain that it was going to last until the end of my life. Yet none of them lasted more than a year or two.

There are a lot of movies out there that I would hate to be paid to do, some real demeaning, real woman-denigrating stuff. It is up to women to change their roles. They are going to have to write the stuff and do it. And they will.

I wake up around nine and do morning chants in my bed. I learned transcendental meditation four years ago, and I do it twice a day, plus an extra ten minutes before the show because I struggle with stage fright just before I go on.

I think a lot of people like hidden-camera shows where they think they're spying on somebody who doesn't know they're looking at them. And nobody takes it seriously - you either enjoy it and get a laugh out of the reactions or not.

My number-one website is brainpickings.org. It opens you up to different authors and gives insights into the literary world. Reading about the love letters novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote to his wife Vera blew my mind. Fascinating.

I am planning my one woman show. It will be a showcase of my life. It starts at the beginning and ends where I am today. It will have every single inch of my life - as much as you can get into an hour. I will be touring everywhere.

What I don't understand is these people who go on the street wearing riding clothes, and they have never been on a horse. They ought to have their heads examined, really. It's a joke. But, let's face it, we live in a fantasy world.

Eventually, life of the party is just like any other job. I've thought of myself that way at times, but it's sort of like holding everybody hostage. It diminishes everyone else. And ultimately, your friends don't require it of you.

I have a harder time eating properly than I do exercising. It's easier for me to add an activity than to deny myself something. And when I do lose the weight, I don't like that it makes me feel good about myself. It's not who I am.

It is so hard nowadays to find a movie that I like. I don't mind blood and gore. But I mind when its a slasher film, and its some guy looking for women. I am opposed to that kind of thing. Blood and gore? I love that kind of thing.

People were really staying away from me. And that's kind of when I split up with all my best friends at school - they were going, "Something's happened to her, she's totally weird" - and found my new friends, who were Beatles fans.

This funny little film we did called 'Sharknado' has caused so much buzz, I would have never imagined. It's literally caused more buzz than anything else I've ever done. I had no idea that it was going to turn into this phenomenon.

What I love about the theater is that you know who you're acting for: your audience. And the thing I find really hard in film is, you don't. The audience is invisible. And we're sitting there, hoping there's other people out there.

I became very close with Charles Bronson and his wife, Kim. We did 'Sea Wolf' together along with Christopher Reeve. I've been lucky enough to work with some amazing, legendary actors. I worked with Rod Steiger twice, for instance.

Without going into too much detail, the end of my major action scene, after the climax of the scene, there was one little change that I suggested regarding the way things should turn out. It was in the detail of the tears of blood.

I went to a very mean school and was bullied like crazy. I was a bit of a goth with purple hair, and I was also part of the drama group, which was filled with actors and writers and wasn't really accepted by the rest of the school.

Every night I fell asleep to a different Beatles album. So I'm very familiar with the Beatles; Ringo was my favorite Beatle until I grew up and then changed. I made the switch over to George Harrison just in time to regain my cool.

It's cool that people enjoy my work. That's fun for me that people, like going to my movies and enjoy all the hard work that everyone put into it. I think that's the biggest reward, to know that everyone enjoyed the movies with me.

All the struggles that were fought for here in the United States for African Americans, you now enjoy the privileges of. You now come here and can enjoy privileges that were fought for by African Americans over several generations.

I'm getting older and the performance onstage was definitely, it was a bit sexier, but it wasn't too much. I don't want to scare off my fans. At the same time my fans are growing up with me, and I don't want to go way over the top.

And you said we wouldn't make it But look how far we've come For so long my heart was breaking But now we're standing strong The things you say They me fall harder each day You're a trainwreck But I wouldn't love you if you changed

You can't live your life blaming your failures on your parents and what they did or didn't do for you. You're dealt the cards that you're dealt. I realised it was a waste of time to be angry at my parents and feel sorry for myself.

I think that we all have to have that rite of passage of dating the tortured artist who seems cooler than we think we are; we aspire to be like them, and we're excited that somebody is turning us on to new music or a new lifestyle.

The people I grew up around who I really liked were quick on the draw. It always just wowed me. And my mum would make weird funny comments. I can see in myself her self-deprecating, hippie humour. I can't take myself too seriously.

There was a point in my life where I either wanted to be an astronaut, an actor, a veterinarian, or a pirate. I just thought being in space would be really cool, but then you have to have 20/20 vision, which I don't have, so there.

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