You can't do what you've been asked to do unless you do the best you can. And roughly speaking, the best you can do is to be very available as a character and actor to the people you're acting with. That's equally important, whether the camera's on the other person or on you.

I'm a sitting duck. No, seriously, I mean I wish I could say more, but I'm a sitting duck because I can't get ahead of them [cyber experts]. They're far ahead of me. That's what I learned: how vulnerable we are. It's a big, silent monster out there. That's what it feels like.

Black women have kinky hair, and we think we have limitations on what we can do. It's interesting that people think, 'Oh this is the only thing they can do.' But if you have blonde, straight hair and don't change it for 20 years - nobody thinks about it. Nobody says anything!

I like acting with no lines because all of a sudden you're able to express things without always worrying about the text. It's great to have a great text, but there's a lot of stuff you can't say in words, and I think there's something really nice about good physical moments.

I think feminism's a bit misinterpreted. It was about casting off all gender roles. There's nothing wrong with a man holding a door open for a girl. But we sort of threw away all the rules, so everybody's confused. And dating becomes a sloppy, uncomfortable, unpleasant thing.

I always feel like a doctor who loses a patient on the operating table or something where I felt just devastated and I beat myself up until I get to try it the next night and “I'll get it better tonight.” So I'm hard on myself. I think I'm not alone in that regard with acting.

It's with a heavy heart that I have decided that I can't relocate. I have two babies under 4. Being a mother and wife comes first, and I just cannot uproot my children and separate the family by moving away. I will miss this job desperately and wish everyone the absolute best.

I'm a big fan of gallows humor. When my aunt passed away, she was in a coma for a day before my cousins pulled the plug. And the amount of joking and base humor that went on that day around her bed was so insane. It's crazy how people talk when something horrible is happening.

I would remind people on the planet that this is the only one we have, and we need to take care of it. I would want people to truly consider what we do and how we treat the earth, the ecosystems, and animals we share it with, and think about the legacy we want to leave behind.

I was blonde most of my life and I had to dye my hair for a role. I couldn’t believe the difference when I went red. I just felt ‘wow, I’m home’. It’s great. You do something stupid when you’re blonde and you’re dumb. Do something stupid when you’re red and you’re a character.

Sometimes it's just enough for me to have the idea. I don't need to see it through to the end. When it actually happens, I'm always disappointed because it's never like what I imagined in my head. When an idea becomes a reality, then it's a job. I'd rather just think about it.

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 shocked by the reaction I got for Bleak House. It was very intensive but one of the best jobs of my life. It was a chance to play a character that grows and develops and I was very enmeshed in it. But I didn't realise how stylish it was and how much people would love it.

My mother wanted to be a teacher when she was young, and my father didn't approve of it, so she fought very hard to become one. And she did it. So when I said I wanted to become an actress, my mother was very supportive. She always said to me, 'There's no such thing as 'can't.

I really like IU... I just think she has the most adorable everything. Her voice is beautiful; she's talented at writing music, guitar, everything. I fell in love with her when I watched her on that drama 'Dream High.' That's probably when I first really fell in love with her.

I learnt a lot from my Broadway experience, it was one of the most challenging things I will probably ever have to do in my entire life, because it was eight shows a week - live singing with really hard choreography - and the spontaneity, you don't know what's going to happen.

I met India Arie, who is one of my favorite artists of all time. It was really sweet, I was broken up with a month before, and she stayed up texting me all night and was helping me through it. Her text message looks like a song of hers. She's sort of become my fairy godmother.

I met India Arie, who is one of my favorite artists of all time. It was really sweet; I was broken up with a month before, and she stayed up texting me all night and was helping me through it. Her text message looks like a song of hers. She's sort of become my fairy godmother.

Nothing is forever, and I do still talk about when I'll come back to Britain. I'd love to come back and do a nice big juicy period drama. I don't understand it when people suddenly turn their back on Britain or Scotland. I'm so aware of it, and it's so much a part of who I am.

I didn't have that typical high school experience of feeling ashamed of who I was. I once wore a superman cape and pajamas, and I thought that was awesome - and some people didn't! But some people did, and it was an arts high school, so nobody made me feel bad about who I was.

There's nothing I'd say that keeps me awake at night, but I think that - when you're working with a group of people that are so beyond talented - that, every day, you wake up going, 'All right, I gotta fight to stay at the same level as these people.' That's what makes it fun.

Someone said adversity builds character, but someone else said adversity reveals character. I'm pleasantly surprised with my resilience. I persevere, and not just blindly. I take the best, get rid of the rest, and move on, realizing that you can make a choice to take the good.

As far as someone who I would like to work with - this is super out of the box, and I have put this on my Twitter - Pam Grier. I love her. I just love her fierceness, and she's kind of, for me, one of the first black superheroes. I would love to have a chance to work with her.

We change people's lives, at the risk of our own. We change countries, governments, history, gravity. After gravity, culture is the thing that holds humanity in place, in an otherwise constantly shifting and, let's face it, tiny outcrop in the middle of an infinity of nowhere.

When I got the call from [Hugh] Hefner... I thought, "Wow - at 40, they still want me?" And I thought it's almost an inspiration - like a "you go, girl" moment. I feel empowered that you can be married and and have three children and still be sexy and confident and look great.

People always feel like there's a big split between TV and films: I'm a television actress, I'm a film actress. Maybe that's how it was but I feel like there's not that separation anymore. And actors are able to kind of flow between both worlds - and connect to both audiences.

When everything in your life is right on track, it's easy to believe that things happen for a reason. It's easy to have faith. But when things start to go wrong, then it's very hard to hold on to that faith. It's hard not to wonder who's reasons these things are happening for.

When I was little, we had a Golden Book that had all these Disney characters in one portrait on the first page. My dad used to read from it every night. We'd play this game of find Pluto or find Donald Duck. He'd read us stories and do all the voices. Those are great memories.

It's quite a famous story that takes place on Christmas Eve, and the Germans, French, and Scottish are trying to make peace one night and they bury their dead and they play football. I play a German opera singer, in German, which I never have so I am really excited about that.

I don’t know how you prepare for something like that. I cannot imagine living in a fishbowl like that. I don’t live here so I don’t know it will be that bad anyway because I live in Paris and we don’t have that sort of phenomenon there. So I don’t know, we’ll see what happens.

I don't know how you prepare for something like that. I cannot imagine living in a fishbowl like that. I don't live here so I don't know it will be that bad anyway because I live in Paris and we don't have that sort of phenomenon there. So I don't know, we'll see what happens.

What women represent to the male is, historically, a big burden. It's a lovely dream, but it's the stuff of literature, art, and everything. Living up to what the male psyche projects onto the female is the stuff of books. You'd need a lot more than an interview to go into it!

The last two days of shooting ('Harper's Island') was probably the most hardcore, the coldest anyone has ever been. It was like your head was freezing, and my motivation for most scenes was, 'The minute this scene is over, I'm heading straight over to that heater to get warm.'

When you have one kid, you feel like you can jet set around, and you can throw him on the hip, and you get your life done. You don't realize how easy one is until you have two. Now I'm really a mom. Oh, I am a mom now! This is for serious - I am responsible for two people now.

I met Jack Nicholson when I was about 10 at a party of my uncles, and it wasnt so much that I knew his films because I was small, but he wore sunglasses inside at night and I thought that must mean he was very important and was suitably star struck by his charismatic presence.

I have had lots of friends who've been affected by Aids and a very good friend of mine, Oscar Moore, died of Aids and I was with him in his last year quite a bit. And of course he was a man living in a very rich culture with a wealthy family who was able to afford health care.

Yeah, it was horrible! I mean really horrible. I felt incredibly awkward. It was not something I was [looking forward to]. I don't know, but it looked good. We somehow managed to make it look realistic. I was proud of myself that I managed to power through and be professional.

Everybody gets typecast in movies, but you have to make wise choices. I'd say around 90 percent of movie casting is about the way you look, so you have to fight that. If producers had their way, I'd only be in action films, but I'm interested in a more varied career than that.

Most of my actor friends dont believe its possible to let go of it and be happy, and for a while that was true for me. For the first two years I ached, every day. And I had such bad dreams. But then I made the decision to start working on my little shop and all that went away.

An Australian girl size 12 and a Swedish girl size 12 are completely different, just because of the way they're formed. It's becoming this worldwide movement because people are getting it. We all have two different parents; we're not supposed to look the same. It's ridiculous.

For every movie that you go see, how many leading male roles are there in any given movie, and how many leading female roles are there? There may be 5 or 6 really good roles for guys and maybe one for a woman. And it doesn't even matter if you're 25. That's just the logistics.

Acting's incredibly enjoyable, but sometimes it doesn't feel quite enough. I've also written a script about the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. This will make me sound like a female Kenneth Branagh, but I can't think of anything nicer than directing myself from a script I wrote.

I don't think anything's ever simple. Everyone's just trying to understand each other, and whether that's because you're in a relationship or because you're meeting their friends or because their meeting your brother or whatever it is, nothing like that is ever smooth running.

Unlike typical romantic comedies, Definitely Maybe is not formulaic or predictable and it spans a decade while being set against a political background. Also, the audience doesn't know who ends up with who until the very end, which makes it a sort of "romantic mystery comedy".

The commitment. I think that's the key quality of all successful people. You just have to keep at it. People who enjoy sustained success understand the fact that you have to remain very committed to whatever it is you're doing, especially in this instant-gratification culture.

I don't like [the pressure] that people put on me, on women, that you've failed yourself as a female because you haven't procreated. This continually is said about me: that I was so career-driven and focused on myself; that I don't want to be a mother, and how selfish that is.

Seeing what is wrong and how it could be made right propels us into action, but in that action we often leave other people behind and don't give ourselves enough time to be present, or to stop and reflect. Leaders have to get comfortable with pausing in that uncomfortable gap.

I'd be stupid not to take into consideration that there are certain things people will not consider me for because my name is Lopez. And I know I can do any kind of role. I don't want anybody to say, Oh, she can't pull this off. So those are barriers that you have to overcome.

I always knew I wanted to be a performer, and my mother started taking me to dance classes when I was five. My mother is a teacher, my father works at an insurance company. When I said I wanted to be a performer, people went, "Yeah, right." You don't do that where I come from.

When I came to Los Angeles, it was the first time that I ever felt like I belong somewhere. Not because it was wacky, but because people here understood what I felt like to perform, and there were other kids my age who wanted to do it. I didn't get looked at as God, you freak.

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