There are stories you can tell on TV that can't be told in movies anymore.
It's a whole other way of working when you work in films: You know exactly the arc of your character.
Jingle taps on the majorette boots were an important part of a little girl growing up in the South.
I wanted to put all my family stories down for my girls, and I remember everything so vividly. I just wanted to put everything down while I still can remember it all.
Just about every town in Texas has a beauty pageant. Ours was called The Dogwood Fiesta. I was in one of those. I played the guitar and sang - and lost.
For a while, I just sang at a steakhouse. I would go from table to table and really just survived on tips.
Nothing in life prepared me for the way I felt about being a mother. Until then, I sort of felt like a blank sheet of paper. I was always trying to second-guess myself, to be what others wanted me to be.
My cousin, Rip Torn, persuaded me not to change my name. You shouldn't change what you are in the search for success.
If somebody wants to think of me as a movie star, that's fine, that's great. It sort of makes me giggle.
Hollywood's fickle. It's always been that way, and it will always be that way. And it's always going to be somebody new and exciting comes along. That's just the way it works, and it will always work that way. And I think that if you give it everything to the exclusion of your own real life and family, you've sold yourself down the river.
I'm drawn to ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, which is a big part of the human condition.
I think that we all fantasize about that teeny tiny time in the film industry when women ruled, back in the '40s.
Rarely in film acting do you get to do a scene for very long.
Texas is just so rich with characters. Women who live alone in a little house on a thousand acres with nothing but cattle and a pickup truck. And an airplane.
There's kind of a time you get warned about where the rug gets pulled out from under you: beyond ingenue, before you get into character stuff.
I used to play softball every summer back in Quitman. My two brothers demanded I be tough. There were certain girls they wouldn't let me invite over because they were too feminine and fragile.
We like to believe we are in control of our destinies, even though we never are and we never have been.
That's what I love about acting and love and drama and art: that humanness we all share.
There is a long tradition of pungent living in the South. It was wonderful to have that imprinted on me so early in life. I already had my core when I left my little town in Texas.
Some families can experience terrible tragedy and deal with it, and others not. I find those things fascinating.
