Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I turn on the radio. I'm a really big fan of old-fashioned dial radio. I love WNYC and NPR and also 88.3 in New York, which is the jazz station, and it's usually good for background music. If I'm not in New York City or by a traditional radio, I'll stream it on my phone, although I usually try not to look at my phone first thing in the morning.
Living here in North America - I have been Americanized. When I go back home now, there are things that I have far less tolerance for in South Africa. We've come such a long way in terms of race relations and the economy as well as people's willingness to move on. There are still a lot of things that are frustrating about being in South Africa.
I love being brown, so I love using Guerlain Terracotta Bronzing Powder. I use it everywhere: my forehead, my cheekbones, a little bit by my chin. It gives me a golden balance that I really like. I also use the Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector for my highlighter right underneath my eye. It's a pretty color - it's not too much and not too little.
I got a call from Tom Hanks, who directed That Thing You Do!, when he was done cutting that film. I was like, "Oh, my god. Tom Hanks is calling me. This is amazing!" And then, of course, he was calling me to tell me that I was barely in the movie. But I'll never forget it - and this is why he's Tom Hanks, because he's got such a way with words.
I feel very lucky that when I'm burnt out of acting, I take to the pen, and I write something I want to direct. And then, when I'm tired of taking on too much responsibility as a director, I then look for an acting gig. And I've made it very clear that I'm interested in voiceover work. I mean, I'm always looking for voiceover gigs. I love that.
Being a black transgender woman in America is really hard. It's been really hard for me. But for me living a lie was much worse. I need to be in my truth. And I've been very, very lucky that I've been able to live my dreams and I believe everyone should have the right to live their dreams. This is America. We're supposed to all have that right.
She (Judy Garland) was a friend of mine, a trying friend, but a friend. That is what I tell myself: She did everything she ever wanted to do. She never really denied herself anything for me. See, I say, she had a wonderful life; she did what she wanted to do. And I have no right to change her fulfillment into my misery. I'm on my own broom now.
I have the weirdest job. The hair and makeup people were talking the other day about how weird their job is. And costumes, they have to be in people's faces and have to reach in their skirts to pull their shirts down and stuff. I was like, "You guys, I meet someone, I shake their hand, and then I kiss them. And sober. During midday. For money."
In the guest star situation on a show, it has a feel of a foreign exchange student - you're worrying the night before where you're going to sit for lunch. 'The Big Bang Theory' was like that. I was supposed to only do one episode. What was different was the cast and production staff was so welcoming, even though I was only scheduled for a week.
I always try to push through fear. I won't be crippled by it. People say, "Oh you take such risks", or "You're brave." And I'm like, 'Well, if you knew - inside I'm really frightened!' But the way people navigate fear and pain is fascinating... The more you feel, the stronger the pain. And the more you engage in life, the more you have to lose.
In this film [The Last King of Scotland] I am the rooky in the cast. Everyone has miles of experience than me and Della is in the same situation, so life imitated art in many ways. I don't think I could be a journalist. I wouldn't make a very good journalist, especially in Washington and working in politics, which I think would be really tough.
You turn on the shower or you do whatever, but especially right now with the drought in California, there are so many resources that we are depleting so quickly. And so, I thought it would be an interesting skill set to have if something were to go down, or even if it weren't. It's not post-apocalyptic idealism. It's more just like a fun hobby.
I'm really silly. That's the thing that people don't get. I think I'm a stronger comedic actress than I am a dramatic actress. I'm not really pigeonholed, but I'm known for drama. I do comedy so easily, and people relate to my humor. I'll be glad because I don't have to stay sexy and young forever. I don't care if I'm big, as long as I'm funny.
In relationship you gotta have friendship because if you don't, even if things may seem perfect in the beginning, times like this when you are married and you have a kid, you have to still be able to have that spunk, that sass, that fun, and that friendship. Because yeah, jumping into something so quickly can very much turn sour very very fast.
To me I think Twitter is a much more honest way to really connect with your fan base without it being the horrible magazines out there that might not get the truth right. At least this gives a little bit of an honest glimpse into someone's life without it being too overdone and too personal. You get to control it, which is what I like about it.
I was in Toronto when the big Women's March was going on, and I thought, 'Well, I've never been to a protest, and I can't sit this one out, and they're having a gathering here in Toronto, so I may as well go,' and gosh, I didn't expect 60,000 or 65,000 people to be there - it was huge! It was something that I didn't feel I could sit out at all.
That people equate being girlie with being nonthreatening … I mean, I can't think of a more blatant example of playing into exactly the thing that we're trying to fight against. I can't be girlie? I think the fact that people are associating being girlie with weakness, that needs to be examined. I don't think that it undermines my power at all.
I'm just more attracted to actors. I like their choice to be artists - that's ballsy. And a guy who has such access to his emotional life is sexy. Or maybe because lots of the actors I know are so broken. I don't think I'm compatible with anybody I've dated. Maybe I'm so attracted to actors because I'm not ready for the 'settled down' thing yet.
Reading was a way to make friends or enemies, a way to discover how all these different people exist in the world and to rub shoulders with them. The ability to feel as if you have met someone, as if that person exists in flesh and blood and that you relate to them somehow, makes you feel a lot less lonely. And it also makes you feel very brave.
When I take on a character, it's a sacrifice. There's something that you give up every time. I want to become these characters, and I want to be mysterious, but if you know too much about me, it's not going to be too much fun watching me play a character, because it's just going to be me with a mask on, instead of you believing what the mask is.
Some things just have a short, beautiful life, and some things have a longer one. One hopes that the things that go a long time are things that you love. It's like a relationship. The longer things go, you have to really work on that relationship with your character, with your castmates, the crew your working for, the producers, and the writers.
Aaron Spelling was a huge fan of vampires, and everything in that genre. He just really loved the entire subject of vampires and he was really passionate about it. If you really like the idea of this other world and the intricacies of it, because there were a lot of them, and once you're hooked, it's always something that's a fascination to you.
Film just chews up actors like nobody's business, and I'm not particularly interested in being chewed up. I think the camera can only look at somebody's face for so long. I guess you have to accept the roles you think are right at the time. You can build a career, but these days there doesn't seem to be that much interest in people being actors.
The writing process is more... it becomes a case of more like a diary for me. I mean, I write stuff down all day whenever I'm experiencing something that I think would be important for me to look at later on. You know, whether it be for writing lyrics or just for a memory, like, 'Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I was feeling that way at that time'.
Working in television it's really great to be able to stick with a character for a long period of time. It's not like you have one shot, and that's it. You have more time, more room, an ability to reflect on your performance and the character and how much has really been shown, and what you'd like to see. It's nice. You have more breathing room.
I don't live in the city, I don't work in a high-risk environment, and I am not a smoker. So it was never anything that would occur to me that I would get lung cancer, but the more I have learned about lung cancer is that it is becoming much more random, and it is striking women who are under 50 and are non-smokers and not in a risk environment.
I remember the old joke, while women are deciding which schools the kids go to, where you're going to live, how the money's going to be spent, and where your health care is coming from, the men are out standing around the barbecue solving all the big world problems. So I think this is a well known fact and we're not breaking any new ground here.
The terrifying thing in my life is that I am just an actress. And I have to keep pushing it and getting approval, approval, approval or I don’t think I’m worth two cents. And I am starting to get over it, thank God. And I’m just sad because I don’t have many years left and I wish I had a longer space of time to think that Elaine Stritch is okay.
I have an oddball sense of humor. So when there was an episode at a comic book convention-of course they end up having Lois dress up all sexy and stuff-but really what I would dress up like is a Stormtrooper. That's what I'd do, because it's hilarious, and who doesn't want to be that at some point, right? So then they made something out of that.
Throughout the entire time I was filming 'Thirteen,' I'd just lock myself in my room and listen to Garbage's first album. It was Shirley Manson, Nirvana and Radiohead who got me through everything. Also, Alanis Morissette and Tori Amos. They were so beautiful and strange, and they gave women permission to be angry and emotional, but also strong.
These issues of gender equity and diversity have been ongoing conversations throughout the decades. I remember even when I was just starting in the business in the 1980s. It's not just Hollywood's problem. This is systemic. It's in our country, so what happens in Hollywood is that everything's just magnified because it's out there in the public.
The thing about 50 is that you've clearly reached a point where you have more of your life behind you than ahead of you, and that's a very different place to be in. You're thinking, 'I've done most of it.' I don't like that feeling. But it makes you evaluate your life and go, 'Am I doing what I want to do? Am I spending my time the way I want?' 
When people go through a fight, they're saying things because they hurt, and they want to hurt the person back. Sadly, that's the nature of a relationship. It's one moment where you aren't very adult, but that's how love and a certain passionate relationship exists. When you love someone, it doesn't mean you become a perfect human being, do you?
When I first started, I wrote some songs with Linda Perry. She's so instrumental in a lot of artist's lives, listening to you and then helping you write songs that are you, that bring the most of what you are out, whereas a lot of producers might put their stamp on you. I gained confidence because I'm less of a straight-up, traditional vocalist.
At 16, 19, 20, you're just kinda going along with whatever's happening. You're not as proactive as you become when you're older. And particularly, something like fame that's happening so quickly - the requests are coming so quickly for you to do interviews or photo shoots, or you're getting work opportunities or whatever, it's happening so fast.
For my own children, I do want for them to look back and remember that it was me in the kitchen, that I was doing the packed lunches, that we were there on the school run, that we did take a bus. I want them to remember those things, because those are the things that I remember from my own childhood and that have been incredibly important to me.
I thought, can you think of any really good reason not to do it? Except that, oh, I'm so shy, or oh, my private life, or oh, are they going to find out how boring I am? You know? And that was the only reason now, in a sense, not to do television. Because it certainly is a method of expression, which has to be accepted as these things come along.
Why would you want to keep the bluebird houses mounted in a place that you now know is unsafe for them? Bluebirds are not ornaments for pictures, they are living things that deserve your best effort if you are going to be a landlord to them. There is no magic spell that will protect those bluebirds--they have to depend on you or they are doomed.
Suri is my daughter, she's very, very special to me, and this project took a lot of time and because it's my first feature I wanted her to know that she's so special to me. I thought that as she gets old that will mean more to her, that she's always the most important, and I wanted to give her a special thanks because she means everything to me.
On every film I do, whenever there are other girls my age, I think it's definitely up to me to set the pace. That's because I've had a lot of experience and I think there's always a certain amount of professionalism that should be maintained. If I was catty or whatever, it would just make the whole shoot unpleasant. And what's the point of that?
I have realized that you can close yourself off to life if you put walls up, but it's a difficult thing ... You can't see over, people can't see in, and you also can't see out. So I've gotten quite comfortable with just being unafraid. I keep saying the same thing: it's not about being fearless but really just embracing the fears and using them.
I never felt like a happy-go-lucky ingenue to begin with. And parts are written better when you're older. When you're young, you're written to be an ingenue, and you're written to be a quality. You're actually not written to be a person, you're written for your youth to inspire someone else, usually a man. So I find it just much more liberating.
Sure, I'd love to be on primetime, but if I'm blessed enough to be picked up by another soap, thank God! It's so hard out there. And when you're not working, you feel horrible. You don't know when you'll get the next job. You don't know how long the soap genre will be around. I want to help keep these shows on the air and keep everybody working!
Mainstream Hollywood makes a few good movies a year. And in order to be in one of those, you have to be one of five people. Hollywood makes many bad movies too, which I'm not interested in being a part of. But there are only a few good independent movies a year, and many, many bad ones. I want to be in good movies, and I want people to see them.
I think people are born bisexual and the make subconscious choices based on the pressures of society. I have no question in my mind about being bisexual. But I'm also a hypocrite: I would never date a girl who is bisexual, because that means they also sleep with men, and men are so dirty that I'd never sleep with a girl who had slept with a man.
We know longer live in a homogenous society, it is not black, white, Asian or Latin, it is a melting pot. Until we learn to assimilate and learn about other cultures, we will continue to have racism problems. Of course, there are other '-isms' as our ills. We have sexism, ageism, elitism, homophobia-ism, there are many -isms we have to overcome.
I choose projects that resonate with me on some personal level and projects that I'm afraid to do. If I'm afraid to do them, then I usually say yes, because it means that I'm not ready to go there and deal with certain aspects of the script. And that means that I need to do it, because the things that scare you only make you better and stronger.
Being an actress, you are accustomed to learn to do so many things... You learn how to dry your hair, curl your hair and do your nails. Sometimes, just for fun, I have someone come in to do my nails, but I like to do them three times a week. If I went out to have them done, then I would spend my life at the hairdresser's and that I can't afford.
I don't weigh myself. I just go by if my clothes fit. I try not to participate too much in the incredible amount of wasted energy that women have around dealing with food. I just feel like being healthy is sort of a job requirement to be on TV, and being a writer is so much coping with fatigue and stress, and you just eat. You eat to stay awake.
More than just romantic comedy, I like romances: drama romance, romance comedy, comedy romance. I also go to the movies to escape. There are times when you go to learn, when you go to be moved, you go to be transported, and there are really times when you go to escape. And I personally escape more happily into a romance than I do violent movies.