It's good for me to pull away from something that is just done for effect, which was basically Sue White in 'Green Wing.' In that, it was very much: if in trouble, gurn, or fall down. There was no character background to Sue. You didn't know who she was. She didn't have any toehold in any kind of reality.

One thing that's great about having kids, especially given my career, is that it forces you out of your narcissism. I mean, I'm in a career where my product is me. So it was nice to have something, someone, come along and take the focus off me. I really needed to give myself some distractions from myself.

I've been painting off and on since I was in sixth grade. I don't paint when I'm acting - I'm not really able to split my focus that way. I do it intensely when I'm doing it, but I'm reluctant to take myself too seriously as a painter because that would mean there would be pressure to be better than I am.

There are so many distractions you can face as a woman, either with relationships or worrying about, Should I go to this party? or, Should I be doing this to help me get ahead? All [success] is, is doing your work and staying focused. It's boring advice, but boring good advice is what you can get from me!

I'm not someone that wants to control everything. I like to work with people that bring their talents to the project. So I like it when the makeup artist has a chance to do their work, when the dresser does their work, when the director does their work. They all come with stories and ideas to think about.

Cinema is a director's medium, so you're saying, "What do you want?" Being an actor is about adapting - physically and emotionally. If that means you have to look great for it and they can make you look great, then thank you. And if you have to have everything washed away, then I'm willing to do that too.

Cinema is a director's medium, so you're saying, 'What do you want?' Being an actor is about adapting - physically and emotionally. If that means you have to look great for it and they can make you look great, then thank you. And if you have to have everything washed away, then I'm willing to do that too.

My first fear was about the devil, when I was around fire, something I saw in a movie. I think it's about pain, in whichever form it comes. I had a lot of energy as a child - sometimes too much - and I didn't know how to channel it. It was making me suffer. It was bigger than myself, and I was very young.

'Transparent' was huge for me when I first saw it. I felt that, from an authorial point of view, no one was trying to sell characters to us, you know? It's the idea of not having to adore these characters and want to cuddle them; you just have to be into them and their psychology and be compelled by them.

My first and most loved real novel was 'Little Women.' I identified with the Jo character even though we were opposites. Jo was very strong-minded and brave, and I was shy and kind of a wuss, everyplace but in my own home. I wanted to be Jo. She was my alter ego. I think reading that book gave me courage.

There is a reason that both have had the longevity in their careers that they have had. They have each done very different things throughout their careers and lived really interesting lives. There is a reason why they are up there still. After all, there is only one Barbra Streisand and one Liza Minnelli.

I think that you may find that Tamera's a little more vibrant and energetic, but I'm much more likely to go up to a person and say, "Hi, I'm Tia, nice to meet you". Wheras Tamera is like...well ...she's a little shy. She's down to earth. I'm more extroverted and she's more introverted when meeting people.

Now let me be clear; millions of women around the world nurse their children beautifully for years without giving anybody else a hard time about it. Teat Nazis are a solely western upper-middle-class phenomenon occurring when highly ambitious women experience deprivation from outside modes of achievement.

There are so many times in life when you have to suppress what you're feeling. A lot of kids have to deal with that in a school environment: You're not allowed to be happy, sad, depressed, over the moon. Being an actor not only do I get to play an angsty teen, but I get the support that I need to be Yara.

I use Pureology Shampoo and Conditioner, and after shampooing, I'll put the conditioner on, go watch a movie, and wash it out later. When you have black girl hair, once we wash, we've gotta do the whole press and get in the edges and everything. That's a lot of heat to go back to straight on a daily basis.

When I'm working, I'm pretty busy with that, but when I'm not, yeah, I like to make music. I sing in jazz bars and stuff, and then I mainly paint every day. It's kind of like a different side of my mind I like to use, and it keeps the other one fresh, and yeah, writing, I've been writing with some friends.

The wonderful thing about Crystal in Mr. Sunshine is that she doesn't have any boundaries. She's not aware socially of what's correct and incorrect. Crystal's probably the craziest character I've ever had to do and the furthest I've gone, with the only exception being Away We Go - I was pretty big in that.

I come from a very musical family. My dad taught me to play guitar. I play violin and drums as well. Violin, I started in elementary school. Drums actually came when I was in a program called 'Rock Star,' which was really awesome. We were doing a song by the Ramones, so I thought, 'Why not play the drums?'

Our family may seem extraordinary in some magazines or something, but at home it's not. We're really just a very loving family. We're very close, and we don't read magazines. We just kind of go to work and come home. We try to keep a sense of reality into their lives. What's truly real, not Hollywood real.

You can relax more when you're playing a silly character than when you're playing a really rigid character. But to be fair, I think George Clooney is a bigger teenager than any of the 'Twilight' cast. He's the guy throwing a football at your head and then hiding around the corner, pretending it wasn't him!

Whether or not you agree with Ayn Rand - and I have certain issues with some of her beliefs - the woman can tell a story. I mean, the novel as an art form is just in full florid bloom in 'Atlas Shrugged.' It's an unbelievable story. The characters are so compelling, and what she's saying is mind-expanding.

I think because I did become a well-known face in my thirties and not in my twenties, I was pretty settled in my boots and I knew who I was. And I think there's a sort of Scottish thing, too, where you don't take yourself too seriously, and you don't get carried away with your own sense of self-importance.

If you're walking with your lady on the sidewalk, I still like to see a man walking street-side, to protect the lady from traffic. I grew up with that, and I hate to see something like that get lost. I still like to see that a man opens the door. I like those touches of chivalry that are fast disappearing.

My Dad was such an incredible person, and you have the option of just curling up in a dark corner and letting it all go or you have the option of standing strong, sticking together and carrying on what he lived and died for. And I think that's what's so important - to be able to carry on where he left off.

Because I've been so blessed with a background in nursing and spent so much time with patients at a really intimate, vulnerable time in their lives, the one lesson I've learned is that you never turn down a challenge where you can keep your creative integrity and your heart and soul and your sense of self.

I know it's odd. But when I was getting scuba certified, it was explained very early on that you never get to just strap on a tank and jump into the ocean. You have to know how deep you're going, and the deeper you go, the less amount of time you stay down there - and it takes longer to get to the surface.

I do my best to look at the bigger picture and not sweat the small stuff. I make it a point to have alone time. I value that some of life’s best moments happen over a meal with your family or a glass of wine with your friends. And when life seems like a lot to bear, I dance around like a kid until I laugh.

I do think we've become so reliant that the phones are never out of our reach. We're always trying to stay connected that way and the irony is that it's actually disconnecting us from everything else because we're not just focused on what's in front of us; we focus on what's in our hand or off to the side.

[Vincent Price] had a fish recipe where he wrapped [the fish] in aluminum foil and put in these herbs. And then you put it in the dishwasher and then you wash your dishes, and when you're done, your fish is steamed and it's perfect. But he was very sophisticated as far as art and food and all of that went.

I wake up and play a different person every day. Playing all these different characters and trying to figure out who your true authentic self is at the core of that as you're playing all these different roles, and man, that self-awareness starts to come into effect. And you start to see who you really are.

Honestly, I am hoping to influence young people, and Twitter's a great way to encourage them to lend their voice to the conversation. Any time you can show young people that you support gay friends and that there are gay people in the world who are lovely, happy, singing, and in love, it opens their minds.

It was only after university that I said to myself that I had to take the risk and have a serious go at acting. It's such a bizarre profession, because you have to be totally tough to deal with all those times when you're being turned down, and then really soft in order to access your character's emotions.

I met a girl when I was in third grade. Kids were beating her up - she was deaf - so I walked her home. Her parents were deaf and they gave me the alphabet on a card. I learned it and taught my friends how to do the alphabet - which was outlawed in our school because we used to talk to each other in class.

I wrote the script to 'Lady Bird,' and it really came out of a desire to make a project about home - like, what the meaning of home is, and place. I knew Sacramento very well, obviously, growing up there, and I felt like the right way to tell a story of a place was through a person who's about to leave it.

I've always thought that when anyone receives an award for acting they should always thank their fellow actors, because the only way you're going to deliver your best performance is when you have other good actors on the set supporting you and being very present for you even when the camera is not on them.

And trust. It takes a long time to trust someone. You work with people, anybody you dont know, it takes about a films length to get to know each other. Then if you move on, you have to start right back at the beginning. But if you carry on together and try doing different things, you can all grow together.

To work for months and months and months, you kind of spill blood and give your heart and soul to something, and then you just sort of let it out into the universe and hope that people like it. How you see it in your head is never how you see it on the screen, so it's almost like an out of body experience.

Golf is like acting in that both require concentration and relaxation at the same time. In acting, you can't push emotion. You have to let it rise from you naturally. Same thing in golf. You have to have a plan and a focus; but then you need to just let it happen and enjoy the smooth movement of the swing.

One of the things I've started doing lately is tracking my dreams. I feel like there's a lot of information there and you can really bring those emotions to the situations that may feel mundane or familiar. That gives them new life and gives you a new relationship with it - if that makes any sort of sense.

Most men are far younger when they have their children and they're building their careers. If they are older they probably don't have the luxury of retiring - and generally sixty something-year-old men don't choose to have a child and spend all their time with that child. So it was a very unique situation.

As a parent, you have to figure out how to shape your kid's character. You want to have human beings who learn about good character. You have to be able to see your child with clarity, see the good side and the bad side of them, and work on the bad side and make them better so they fulfill their potential.

When you've got four people to get dressed to get out the door you don't really spend a lot of time on yourself. But that's the way I roll anyway. I was never one to do my hair and make-up just to go to the market, so it's not that much different. If I get a little eye cream on, I feel I'm ahead of myself.

I still battle with my deeply boring diet of, essentially, yogurt and breakfast cereal and granola bars. I hate dieting. I hate having to do it to be the 'right' size. I'm hungry all the time. I think I'm a slender person, but the industry apparently doesn't. All actresses are hungry all the time, I think.

I actually think acting is a form of self-hypnosis. You have to be hyper, hyper aware of what's going on around you. You have to know where the lens is, what the shot is, and where you're moving. And then you have to trick yourself into an emotional state where you believe this stuff is actually happening.

Candice is the original spelling of my name. I changed it to Kandyse when I was really young and first starting out in the business as kind of a joke. I didnt realize it would stick! I did consider changing it, but then it seemed too confusing, so then I asked them to change it back. Not too soon, however!

People say to me, 'You seem to have made this conscious decision to do independent films'. In reality, I haven't. After each movie, I always think, 'how different can I possibly be? Is this going to challenge me, is this going to inspire me, and is this going to make me love my job more than I already do?'

I really like those days when I can just wear sweatpants, to be honest. And when I'm actually going to go somewhere, I like to be comfortable and casual. If I'm doing something a little more fashion, going a little bit further. It's about expressing yourself and being comfortable and wearing what you like.

Some 'Terminator' fans are outraged that I'm playing Sarah Connor. They think I'm not muscly enough. To be honest, I'm a little tired of the comparisons to Linda Hamilton. I know she will always be the original Sarah Connor, but when people see what I bring to the role, they will look at her with new eyes.

The roles that men and women play are no longer the standard traditional roles of way back when but are those of two very individual people living their lives. I think it's been a hard transition in society - just take a look at the divorce rate - to figure out what that means now. How do you resolve that?

My family's been in show business since the 1700s. I traced them. I'm bred to this. Like a racehorse. A thoroughbred. Look at my parents, my God. But it was my curiosity that made me do this. Because you could also say: "Look at Frank Sinatra Jr." It's not like a natural thing that happens. You gotta work.

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