I do get up in the morning and I try to spend at least half an hour meditating and reading something spiritual. I start my day with meditation and prayer, and I truly believe that all the stuff you do on the outside isn't as important as what you do on the inside.

When I graduated from college in early 2010, I decided that I needed to create a calling card, some kind of business card that people can link to my name and face. So I did this 'Mad Men Theme Song...With a Twist' music video. I released it just as I moved to L.A.

In real life, we do things out of character, constantly. A couple of days ago, my shoes were hurting, so I walked barefoot through New York. Someone who has known me my whole life would think that was so out of character. But I did it because of the circumstances.

Beauty is only skin deep. If you go after someone just because she's beautiful but don't have anything to talk about, it's going to get boring fast. You want to look beyond the surface and see if you can have fun or if you have anything in common with this person.

Nicholas Hytner, who directed Center Stage, is a huge ballet fan. He was completely open, as was Bruce Beresford, to get our perspective. "No, we wouldn't do this. Yes, we would do that. That's not realistic." So, I feel like Center Stage did well in that respect.

I went to art school when I was little. I took ballet lessons. I played a little kick ball. I was sort of into everything because I had too much energy and I didn't know where to put it. When I was a preteen, I got into singing, and became really obsessed with it.

I actually try not to go on my phone too much. That's something that's been a huge self-care move for me. I got rid of my iPhone, and so I'm actively working toward trying to be more present and not feeling uncomfortable when I don't have it as a coping mechanism.

I'm addicted to those moments when you're on stage and the audience is so quiet you could hear a pin drop and you realize that you're in communion. That's an incredible experience. That's a cosmic experience, as far as I'm concerned, without getting way out there.

I think it's very important to support the program in your area, as each part of the country has its own challenges coping with AIDS. It can be very different from state to state and city to city. Wherever you live, there is surely someone who could use your help.

Long ago, I did a five-and-a-half-hour-a-day, six-day-a-week talk show for four years, early on, in Los Angeles - local show. And when you are on that many hours with no script, you know, you get very comfortable, maybe overly comfortable with that small audience.

I remember being interested in theater when I was in school, but I wasn't always engaged in making it a career. I was a cheerleader in Texas, but I tore my ACL, so I was out for the rest of the season. That's when I started putting more of my passion into theater.

If you know why someone is doing what they're doing, why they're behaving the way they are, then that's your job to reveal that, and often that's situational. The storytelling does that, and then some of it's your job as an actor to make that subtext come to life.

And doing a film in that period, and having to really celebrate what they wore back then, how they sat and how they spoke. You know, what the etiquette was back then for a lady. All of those things are like putting on a wig and transforming yourself, which I love.

Some days, I know beauty techniques like it's my job, and other days I can't do my makeup for the life of me. So I find it easiest to just put on mineral veil and a little mascara and call it a day. I use Physician's Formula and Bare Minerals every day of my life.

I have a terrible image in my mind of a cow going to slaughter. There's not a lot of fight in them. Pigs, they'd squeal and thrash around. They'd fight. It's almost as if cows don't know they have a choice. Not that they don't panic, but they do so in a quiet way.

It's hard to remember when you look at a magazine or when you look at pictures of people, and you forget that those people are people like you. They have flaws and insecurities. That's so easy to forget, even for me, as somebody who's sometimes in those magazines.

It's my mission to share this with the world and to let them know that there is life on the other side of those dark times that seem so hopeless and helpless. I want to show the world that there is life -- surprising, wonderful and unexpected life after diagnosis.

In college, I went to school for acting; we had to learn phonetics just to be able to do dialects and all that stuff. I'm somebody who does better just hearing it. I'll just imitate it, and I get it better that way. When I know too much information, I'm not great.

All accusation is of the devil, no matter where it comes from. It is just as dangerous to accuse others as it is to give the accuser room in your own life. The accuser gives no hope. God does not accuse us, but He does give us promptings that bring light and hope.

I think that, when you play a mother, whether you play a bad mother or a not so great mother or an amazing mother, being a mother is already so complicated. It's already three-dimensional, automatically, no matter what the role is, because you're playing a mother.

Because I had some roles that resonated with women, I immediately noticed that there were far more male characters than female characters in what we're showing little kids in the 21st century, which was stunning to me. But I couldn't find anybody else who noticed.

Self - belief is everything. Whether you want to start a law firm or a jewelry business, women get pushback, societally. People will be like, "This is a bad idea." You have to have enough self-belief to see where you're gonna end up and not let anybody derail you.

I think so many people give us ideas of what we are. I think as women especially, because we're sensitive by nature, we're more vulnerable, we absorb other people's ideas about what we're supposed to think or who we're supposed to be and how we're supposed to act.

I try as best I can to really put all I can into what I'm doing. A lot of days I fail and there's too much to do. I do think it's really important to have time to yourself, whether that's reading something interesting when the kids are in bed or even having a dog.

I found myself Tivoing because I was working so much last season [of Heroes], I Tivoed all of the episodes so I could come back and watch them back to back to back and I found myself like I could not put my remote down. I was like, "Just one more episode, please."

I guess because I'm so young, I m not sure of what lies ahead for me. I'm more into going the route of producing and directing. I just made a little short film. I'm more excited about going the route of doing a Drew Barrymore or... what's the one from 'Star Wars?'

I think writing letters is a lost art, but nowadays it's something that means even more, because it's so easy to communicate in so many different ways. But I find a love letter can even be a little post-it note stuck in your pocket, with a sentence or a few words.

In storytelling you kind of put your nightmares up there, you put your dreams up there and people can see them better because they can stand outside of it and look at it and recognize themselves inside it. So I feel that that in and of itself is a spiritual thing.

I have very eclectic taste in music. I like everything from Nirvana, which is featured in the film, to world music, to orchestral and jazz. For me, the nineties were about Oasis, because I was travelling around Britain when that band exploded onto the music scene.

You don't want to be mean to people, but some people are real assholes. And you can't say that on TV - or, you can, but probably, as a celebrity, I can't get away with it. Trust me. Unless you're somebody who can say anything they want, I guess, like Donald Trump.

I don't waste any time at all. I have no time at all for people who are being very negative or people who are very whiny or people who feel sorry for themselves. I tend to go to them and just say, you don't understand how incredible life is and how precious it is.

I really thought when I was pregnant with my first that it wouldn't affect my work at all; it would just be a baby that grows up on set. And I was absolutely wrong. For women, the high point of their career and needing to have babies just don't really go together.

The best part of having two babies at once, a son and a daughter, is mostly everything. You're just having that feeling of love inside you all the time and motherhood is such a fulfilling place to be. I kind of wish it would have happened to me earlier in my life.

An activist is someone who makes an effort to see problems that are not being addressed and then makes an effort to make their voice heard. Sometimes there are so many things that it's almost impossible to make your voice heard in every area, but you can sure try.

My dad, Julien Temple, is unbelievable, so supportive. He's helped me to make such important decisions and he's so proud. I really admire him... I think he's one of the most talented people in this industry, so to have him be proud of what I'm doing is incredible.

There were nineteen years between my grandparents, and I was in a relationship for five years from the age of fifteen to twenty with a man who was thirteen years older than me who remains one of the loves of my life, and he passed away when I was twenty years old.

To me 'they lived happily ever after' means to be happy with yourself! My parents always taught me that being happy has to work without Prince Charming. My life is completed without a prince but it's nice of course to have someone who loves you and fights for you.

I'm so not a performer, my drive to do [acting] is so different to other people - and I'm not discrediting that, they're born performers, they're people that you love to watch just be themselves. I like to be a little bit more in control. I like to make something.

I have a very strong distinction between work and my life. They are not the same and I don't want to ever feel that on a day to day basis that I have to live up to people's expectations, because you never can do that so I don't want to put that pressure on myself.

In South Africa one in four women have AIDS. When you are there it is shocking. So many people are dying from the disease and the same number are getting the disease each year. My main goal was to learn and call attention to some of the things that were happening.

Making films can be absolutely fantastic, but it can also be incredibly dull. You spend the whole day sitting by yourself in your trailer and then you get called to deliver one sentence - then you're told to come back and do it again at 5:30 the following morning.

When I'm breaking in a character like Jessica Jones, I have this amazing opportunity to create her backstory. It's all of the work that happens before I'm ever on camera... Writing 'Bonfire' was like doing all of that fun stuff; it was like 300 pages of prep work.

People have to look to the right places for guidance. Looking at a certain type of entertainment shouldn't be where you go for guidance. To zone out, have a laugh, sure - but it's not a great example on how to navigate on a journey. There are other places to look.

What's great is that a lot of us are playing so against type in this, and it's awesome. All of the writers put faith in the fact that we know what we're doing. We have creative freedom, and it's awesome. I think it all worked out. Everybody on the show is so good.

Nobody ever seems to want my advice about serious stuff. People will be like: 'Who made that sweater?' Or 'How did you get your hair so straight?' They don't to come to me for the relationship advice or deep stuff. In fact, my little sister actually hides from me.

Nobody is here without a reason. I always had a different sensibility. I like a huge range of comedy - from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated - but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it.

When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now. But I don't think there are too many films coming out these days that we're going to look at in the future and say, "This is one of the great ones."

When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now. But I don't think there are too many films coming out these days that we're going to look at in the future and say, 'This is one of the great ones.'

You can find the money, you'll be okay, but the things that you choose to invest your energy in, that shapes your life and your path and where you go from there. I find that when I'm a part of things that I believe in and I love, it leads to more things like that.

I'm trying to find myself as a person, sometimes that's not easy to do. Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do. The best way for me to find myself as a person is to prove to myself that I am an actress.

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