I remember at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Shaq always wanted me to show him steps over and over.

I can't even remember when I first went, 'I want to be an actress.' It's always been inside of me.

As a little girl, I remember always wanting my grandmother to make blackberry cobbler for me. I'm obsessed with it.

I remember the chief executive at Southampton after Nicola Cortese thanking me for the platform I left them. That recognition is always nice. That's like winning a trophy for me.

'Brokeback Mountain' just blew me away. I'll always remember talking to Heath Ledger just after he finished that movie and he was going on about working with Ang and how incredible he was.

I got this Jesus tattoo on my wrist when I was 18 because I know that it's always going to be a part of me. When I'm playing, it's staring right back at me, saying, 'Remember where you came from.'

To me, the thing about anime is that it's so adult-oriented. I remember going to Suncoast growing up, and you see 'Akira' there with the little 'Not for Kids' sticker on it. That always made an impact on me.

Chicago always hit me as such a gloomy place - I just remember all the snow getting dirty as soon as it would fall, all the decaying brown brick buildings around where we lived, all this soot all over the place.

I've always been in the theater. I've always gone to it. That's been my way to cope. Early on in my career, I remember running - fleeing - to the theater as a way of coping with all the meshugaas that was going on for me.

I know some of my memories are made up and they are far more powerful than the things that actually happened. For example, I always remember my brother posting me a copy of 'Dubliners' from Africa, but he says he never did.

I could always improvise. Some of my teachers remember me standing in front of the class with a flower on my head, talking about photosynthesis. I'd stop and say, 'Is this working for any of you?' The kids were like, 'What is he doing?'

I remember somebody asking me in an interview years ago if I would be interested in playing Jason Bourne. I laughed: I didn't think anybody would want to see me run around with a machine gun. It always stayed in the back of my head that I had reacted like that. It bothered me.

I remember my first acting class: I was like, 'That's it.' If I know that I want to do something then I'm going to do it and there's no stopping me, whether it's if I want to take a movie part or don't, or eat sushi for lunch or don't. There's always a very clear goal. Once I figure out what I want that's it.

I always knew my mother was different, different from the other mothers in the way she dressed, the way she spoke, but most obviously, the way she mothered. I remember a slumber party where, instead of a sleeping bag, she urged me to bring a small, inflatable mattress because the dust on the floor was liable to aggravate my allergies.

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