I want my life to effect the balance to the positive.

I have learned to pare down what I do and still be effective and strong in a role.

I hope that doing truthful portrayals of people in a variety of circumstances gives people a kind of subterranean link to those characters.

My father taught me how to substitute realities.

I had started off, before I ever got an acting job, working at Robert De Niro`s Tribeca Productions as a reader. I was always interested in that side of the camera.

I take the responsibility of choosing seriously because it becomes an indelible part of your body of work. Something has to sing to me.

There are all kinds of other things I could do, things I would probably like, but only acting would give me emotional fulfillment.

I could have seen myself going into academia, but I don`t love it; I just like it.

I hate it when people use sex as a weapon against the people who are engaging in it. It`s so hypocritical.

I assume that if people get to know me, they`ll like me. If they don`t, it`s not my problem.

I had a Christian upbringing - it was all about sin and guilt. I was very happy just kissing people. I was like the make-out queen - not even second base.

Now that I`ve got some films under my belt, I have the courage of my convictions regarding acting. It gives me a leg to stand on.

My major in college was Chinese Studies. It was very intentional.

When I was 5, my mother threw a party, and a friend and I wrote and performed a play called The Dutch Doll.

I always feel I can play a role - just give me the time to do the preparation and I`ll be it.

The name game is frustrating. Agents will say, They love you, but they`re going to offer it to Julia Roberts first.

There`s a side of my personality that goes completely against the East Coast educated person and wants to be a pin-up girl in garages across America...there`s a side that wants to wear the pink angora bikini!

It`s the relationships between people that are more important than the sort of far away fantasies of what the good life is, the world of supermodels and Bud ads.

We all struggle with our failure to communicate and our failure to reach beyond fear to love people.

The Oscars have become such a big deal these days that it`s just used as adjective.

Once you`ve found something you know how to do, it makes you feel you don`t have to be intimidated by someone.

Acting is doing, because everything you say or do is some kind of an action, some kind of a verb. You`re always connected to the other person through some kind of action.

There was something about being in front of audiences when I was in elementary school plays that gave me a thrill. It was like the rush you get from a roller coaster drop.

I try to become more humble and more myself with every year. There was a while when I got famous where I was so confused and my head was spinning.

I have a hard time getting motivated to do something that seems like a career move. I`ve gotten into vague trouble with my agents for turning down work that I thought was exploitative.

I was offered one of the roles in a big project that shall remain nameless. I thought the whole thing encouraged violent sex crimes toward women. It made horrible, ghastly rape violence seem sexy. I just didn`t want to sign my name to it.

I had been looking for a New York apartment, but I said, Why not give LA a go?

Sometimes I feel limited by people`s perceptions of what I can and cannot do, or what I do or don`t look like.

Being is like pretending.

I`ll talk to myself out loud a lot.

Acting is what happens on the way.

I wanted to do something far from my intellectual and physical home, so I went to live in Beijing for eight months and took Mandarin Chinese.

I`m doing things that are more artistic again, more close to the material that I love. I don`t disparage those things that I did. They`re just not as much reflective of who I am.