I had a very hard time accepting myself as a character actress, because I wanted to be glamorous and a leading lady like everybody else. I looked in ….

I love Maude Pearson character from Agel. I love that she walls her son up because he has a girlfriend! In fact, I have that clip on my reel - her wa….

I never heard Coen brothers get defensive, ever. You get with these filmmakers doing the hardest work in the world, and they're not defensive. They'r….

I like the line leading up to that: "I made your daughter the lead dancer, and you're not committed!" It's how people in their own little narrow worl….

I love smoking. I miss it every day of my life. If I found out that it didn't cause cancer, I would go out and buy, like, eight cartons right now..

Tone is a very difficult thing. You can't write tone, I don't think. You can try - you certainly try. I write too, so I know I'm trying desperately t….

Reality television, anybody can be a star at any minute..

I knew Steve Carell because of Little Miss Sunshine, so I felt very comfortable with him. Maybe he always does it to guest stars, but I felt as thoug….

All of a sudden I got a vision of Guernica - Pablo Picasso's painting, which is one of my all-time favorite paintings in the world. I remember readin….

Sometimes I'll say, "When Sandy Bullock and I were doing Speed - the movie, not the drug." Just in case someone's listening..

If you just think Donnie Darkos a weird movie, you don't want to think. You don't want to feel your feelings. So yeah, I do want to shake 'em up..

There's always that key to every character that lets you go to those places you need to go to. No matter how much you might hate the character, it ma….

Patrick Swayze was risk-taking - because he not only did a transvestite, but in Donnie Darko, he played a pedophile! Talk about a risky thing for a m….

It's Richard Kelly's brilliance, because he led me to Donnie Darko performance. He wanted sincerity, he didn't want it to be one color, and he made m….

I thought Sissy Hickey should be really skinny and leathery and have one of those really husky voices, but Del Shores kept saying, "I wrote this part….

My agent says, "You have an audition for the next Dustin Hoffman movie, playing a pioneer woman." And I go, "All right!" I passed Barry Levinson in t….

Maybe because All About Steve is about offbeat people, viewers don't want them to be heroes. There is something archetypal in us that we like a leadi….

Maybe the actors that used to turn down William Goldman's scripts - where he wanted them to stretch and grow, and he was mad at 'em, and said, "Why w….

Jessica Tandy. Nice company! And Ruth Gordon. They worked all along. She didn't really get any big star recognition until Driving Miss Daisy. So what….

My father died right after the movie Rain Man was released. He got to see it, then literally the day before he died, he asked Mama to take him to see….

I was up at Big Sur with Christopher Reeve and Christine Lahti, doing this woman in a big fat-suit - Mrs. Bassett in Tennessee Williams' Summer And S….