I just like to express myself in the world around me. And I love writing, but sometimes it feels a little too minute. Sometimes, at the end of the day, there's just not enough colors involved - visually, there are just words on a page.

In my father's generation, the product was 80 percent of what you were putting into the world, and your personal life was 20 percent. It now seems that 80 percent of the product I put out is silly, made-up stories and what I'm wearing.

When people said schooldays were the best days of your life, I remember thinking: 'Tell me it's not true. This cannot be it.' I don't think my life has ever been that bad again. It hasn't always been easy but at least I have been free.

As long as she is talented enough and passionate about doing it herself then I will be happy and support her. I think I will be sensible - my parents said I could only do it if I got my education and so I had something to fall back on.

When I get recognized for 'Twilight,' it's usually a teenage girl, and they're usually really loud. So it certainly feels like I get recognized the most from that, but it could just be because of the nature of how vocal those fans are.

The level of sacrifice in the world of dancing is incredibly intense, that work ethic if nothing else - get up, go to class, rehearsal, performance, get up, go to class - that's your life, and it's like that for a finite time, usually.

I remember seeing Airplane, and even Mel Brooks movies like History of the World Part I, and just really loving that style of movies that make fun of movies. I think it needs to be done. All of these movies are ripe for being poked at.

I was asked to act when I couldn't act. I was asked to sing 'Funny Face' when I couldn't sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn't dance - and do all kinds of things I wasn't prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.

Humor is like a rhythm; it's like music. And you throw a couple of extra syllables in, you wreck the beat and you kill the laugh. So I try to follow the writers very carefully because I know how carefully they worked to do it that way.

I want my children and my grandchildren to live in a world with clean air, pure drinking water, and an abundance of wildlife, so I've chosen to dedicate my life to wildlife conservation so I can make the world just a little bit better.

It just clicked that it was the next step for me; choreographing didn't interest me, and opening a studio wasn't a passion for me. I didn't know if I'd be very good at acting, but then my first scene in acting class... I just loved it.

[Roger] Vadim became famous worldwide as a director, and I as an actress, but the other side of the coin was terrible. My life was totally turned upside down. I was followed, spied upon, adored, insulted. My private life became public.

The truth is, I like my body more when it's thinner. I have a range of jeans, and I'm happier in the smaller ones. But I don't have the same drive to get into those jeans. I'm not going to change my day to get there, whereas I used to.

Personally, I prefer to play against the look: If a character appears particularly unhinged, with makeup running down her face, I like to play her as if she has it together. I think that juxtaposition makes it so much more interesting.

It seems like people increasingly just can't be by themselves because they're so used to having an epicenter on the Internet that actually exists for other people. Until someone clicks onto your Facebook page, it doesn't mean anything.

I found myself at the beginning of 'Mad Men,' because I wasn't a sample size, spending an exorbitant amount of money on a nice dress that I would never wear again because someone would say - 'Christina Hendricks wore this dress twice.'

I have to expose myself and then accept the judgment that audiences and critics will have. And that's okay. I appreciate the elliptical nature of it. Sometimes people are more in the mood to be nice to me than others, and that's great.

If something is a comedy for the sake of just comedy's sake and it doesn't have a good message, I don't have an interest in being part of it. If something is just serious and scary with no good message, I don't want to be a part of it.

I'm a chocoholic. I need chocolate every day, like one little piece of Droste. I'm not into milk chocolate. But I don't like it when its super bitter. I need a sweet factor in there. I go for the 75 percent - that's good enough for me.

I always loved working as an actress, but I didn't understand why I couldn't just opt out of being famous. And then I realized you can, and I think I did. And eventually, I came to understand that you can do that and also keep working.

There's something really liberating about feeling great in what you work out in because when you feel great in the gym, then you are just going to do a better job. You'll feel more comfortable, which will allow you to push your limits.

I think despite what we've seen on TV, people like seeing women and knowing about women's stories and their struggles and their truth. I think we've seen it in a lot of these shows - when there's a cast of all women, it does very well.

I would love to be able to program myself to pick up any instrument and to be able to play it very, very well, and to be able to read music and dance as well. I'm very uncoordinated, and I'd love to be able to bust a really great move.

Working on 'Gossip Girl' was a fantastic experience. It was my first real gig and I'm thankful for it - I got to learn a lot. I'm glad I got to explore getting comfortable in my own shoes in the background on a show like 'Gossip Girl.'

When I was in my teens, I thought, 'Would I like to try and work hard at being an actor, or do I want to work hard at doing something musical?' Acting won out, but I do really enjoy those moments where I get to just belt something out.

I find that a lot of the good acting comes out when you're physically being pushed: your brain turns off and just deals with the situation at hand. You get to a point where you're exhausted at the end of the day, but I quite like that.

Lots of people there seemed to be in denial, in absolute denial, of death - everybody's pretending that death doesn't happen in L.A.; if you do enough exercise and take enough wheatgrass and have your pill every day, you might not die.

When I was three years old, a nanny took me shopping and I saw large cut-outs of Mary Poppins in the store and yelled, 'That's mummy!' These women walked by and said, 'Oh how cute. That little girl thinks that Mary Poppins is her mum.'

I am on Facebook, but it's mainly for friends and family, so it's not my real name. But I am on Twitter a lot. I resisted it for so long, but I love it because I get to connect with people I look up to - actors, comedians, and singers.

But for everyone, I think, there is always a pressure to conform, and I guess as you get older you realize it's less interesting to do that. It starts with you, though, saying, 'I know what I like doing and that's what I'm going to do.

It always starts with a script. I like to have plenty of time to read something, and I always like to read a paper copy. I hate reading it on email. I sit down with a script, and want to see how it hits me. It's an instinctive process.

I don't know how in the twenty-first century we can possibly justify not showing girls things that they can aspire to, and at the same time, how can we possibly be showing boys this narrow vision of what women are and what they can be.

Honestly, I was only rested in rugby football; all my friends were boys, and I definitely didn't want to go on stage, but I just did it to keep everyone happy. I did some singing, dancing like they liked, but it wasn't my thing at all.

"Just to have my kids be in the sun every day-picking avocados, going for a swim," she says. "Even for two years or something, and come back when they go to senior school." Just what kids want to do, pick avocados. Also: senior school?

I've borne these two kids into a particularly strange circumstance. They are going to have to fend off a lot and protect themselves from a lot of projections and prejudice about who they are, coming from the family that they come from.

I've had a very unique path that's different from everybody else's. I was never a dater. I never went out that much. I've always had long-distance relationships. And, everything has come very fast in my life. I haven't waited for much.

Crazy people are my people? Really? I think that's silly. That's another one of those pigeonhole things. Lay somebody on an ironing board and put a scalding hot iron on them, get that going real good: 'Oh, this is who Holly Hunter is.'

The coral that grows at the edge of the reef is always the strongest and most colourful because it faces the greatest battering. It's the same if you're called Honeysuckle. I'd have had a totally different life if I'd been called Mary.

My view is quite simple. When your dog pees on the carpet, you do not give away your dog. You say, This dog is special. I have to teach him not to pee on the carpet. I feel exactly the same way about men. They need to be taught things.

Children are my pet cause. I have a foster child in El Salvador, and whenever I'm home, I work for the Adam Walsh Foundation, which finds missing children. I also do some hospital visits and other things for the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

The bond between a parent and child is the primary bond, the foundation for the rest of the child's life. The presence or absence of this bond determines much about the child's resiliency and what kind of adult they will grow up to be.

If I have makeup, I use a cleanser, but otherwise, I just use a hot cloth at the end of the day to keep moisture in my skin without stripping it off. I do splurge on La Mer, but other than that, I use just use Nivea from the drugstore!

I still enjoy acting. I love the moment in front of the camera, but it's all the other moments that I don't enjoy. The 'business' aspect of it, the gossip. I really dislike about 99% of what I do, but I like that 1% when I'm on camera.

I went out with seven actors in a row. There are problems with that. I've had the really good-looking dramatic actor, and that has its problems. And then I'll go out with the funny guy. It's almost like the funny guy has more to prove.

I started by looking everything up in a Star Trek dictionary so I knew what I was talking about, but you can't do that because they talk in circles, and half of it doesn't make sense, so you'll just end up driving yourself more insane.

For myself, anyway, I think that recurring has been such a gift, because I've been able to work on a lot of shows that I've really had a lot of respect for before I went in, shows like 'Friday Night Lights' and 'Nip/Tuck,' for example.

I've never been interested enough to have a career trajectory. I've never had any ambition or thought of what I should be doing or had any idea of what I'd like to do. Never. And still don't. And if something comes along, I say 'Fine.'

It is really hard to completely re-learn how to express yourself without using words. When you take away speech, you have to re-invent the way you express yourself. You have to exaggerate your body language and your facial expressions.

I told everyone that acting's for losers and I needed to get an education. But something kept telling me to give it one last chance. In the end, I lasted a month on the M.B.A. and then decided to quit, come back to L.A., and try again.

I think when you're just counting on your voice, you actually need double the energy. I find myself acting out the scenes and being very physical while I'm recording because I think you can tell when someone is just sitting on a stool.

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