It's also a question of finding good material and interesting roles. I'm not the only actress out there, and good parts just don't fall into your lap that easily. But I like most of the films I've made recently and so I'm pretty positive about the future.

It's part of the celebrity process but my life has never been as interesting or as wild as what's been printed about me.

What's awful about being famous and being an actress is when people come up to you and touch you. That's scary, and they just seem to think it's okay to do it, like you're public property.

I'm getting asked a lot, 'You don't have kids, so how do you know how to act like a mother?' I know nothing could compare, and I haven't had that experience, but when my niece was born, I felt like I would jump in front of a car and die for this little person I didn't even know yet.

I am not a person who can really sit around and think about regrets because with every bad experience that you have, there is weirdly something good that comes from it.

It's an indication of how cynical our society has become that any kind of love story with a sad theme is automatically ridiculed as sentimental junk.

I was single for a while and dating and... I just didn't know how to do it! I've always been like that: when I was 15, there was a guy I liked, and we made out, and I thought that meant he was my boyfriend.

You can't pay enough money to... cure that feeling of being broken and confused.

Weird people follow you in the streets, you can't sit alone in a restaurant or a cafe and read a book in peace, and I think everybody values those moments of being alone.

I have this sense that I didn't really start growing up until my twenties.

People think that they just want movies like Pretty Woman, when really they - at least the ones that I know personally - have been waiting for something that doesn't completely insult them.

The description of my character in the first few movies I did was always 'nerdy,' but I liked that; it was way more interesting.

Scorsese would talk to me about this movie 'The Heiress' with Olivia de Havilland. We were talking about this scene in it, and suddenly we were rolling. It was very intentional, and I didn't realize - because we talk old movies all the time.

I think I'm learning to be bolder in my career choices and be more confident in my personal life. I haven't always felt very secure as an individual, but now I feel I certain confidence and sense of self that gets me through the day a lot better than before.

I loved movies, but I can't remember ever really wanting to be an actress, and I certainly didn't imagine ever being in a movie. I think I wanted to be a writer.