I like to do research. It gives me a sense of ownership. That's very powerful for me as an actor to just own it.
I can very much enjoy taking a year off. Whereas some people would feel crippled by that, I can feel enlarged by it.
Drama is all about the moment of ultimate conflict for a person.
The first and most important thing you need to be creative is to relax, particularly for the actors.
When you have an actor on set who is playing themselves in a movie that is about the most cathartic, most traumatizing event of their lives, you don't even have to mention that.
Giving up something personal to the public, you are surrendering something.
Each project, I can almost feel like I'm like a different person.
Do I trust myself? Sometimes I don't even know, but I can only just kind of throw my hat in the ring and hope for the best. Depending on how much I trust the other people is how much freedom I can allow myself to have on that particular set.
Sometimes I go, 'Wow, this is a director I really, really want to work with,' like David Cronenberg. I haunted David Cronenberg for years before, and then he offered me a role.
I'm almost 60. I've been doing this for a while. In order to do this for that long, you have to make decisions based on lots and lots of different criteria, you know. I mean, the criteria has to shift, especially if you're an actress.
Actors do movies because you want to make a connection; you want an audience to recognise themselves in what it is that you're depicting.
In my career, I've never been a box office name. Granted, a couple of my movies have made a lot of money, but I'd do other movies which make very little money, or they're not seen that much.
Once I hit 45, there was a real downturn. But I got an incredibly provocative, delicious lead role in a television series called 'Saving Grace,' and I loved the character.
I'm too small and too short. I thought that was odd; that should be a non-issue to me.
I don't think it's wrong to make fun of some of the stuff that we think and we do.
I would say, yeah, I'm a spiritual person.
Do I believe in God? I don't know what that really means. I don't know what my personal connections with G-o-d are. But spirituality is soulfulness.
Is there a higher energy? I would say yes, even if the energy is collective. Even if it's kind of Jungian, or the whole thing is collective consciousness, that may be God as far as I'm concerned. So is there an energy that's higher than mine? Yes.
I was playing 'The Flight of the Bumblebee,' and I totally forgot the ending, so I performed the whole piece again, and I still couldn't remember it.
Sometimes it's the script or an opportunity to work with an incredible director.
