I go to a lot of movies where people are all around me laughing, and I feel like I'm from outer space because I find it dangerous and stupid and horrible and degrading to women and all these things.
I'm older. There's some sort of seniority. As a matter of fact, the seniority ebbs as you get older.
There are improbable things suspended in space, like the earth.
My job is usually to express emotion as freely as possible.
The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.
Expensive clothes are a waste of money.
Integrate what you believe in every single area of your life. Take your heart to work and ask the most and best of everybody else, too.
My family really does come first. It always did and always will.
Personality is immediately apparent, from birth, and I don't think it really changes.
I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern with my looks as they pertained to my work.
The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy, we can all sense a mysterious connection to each other.
You win an Oscar, it can double the audience that you had before.
We are who we're going to be when we're very old, and when we're very old we are who we were when we were 8.
It is well that the earth is round that we do not see too far ahead.
There are wonderfully talented actresses. It's a really rich field. There isn't as rich a field of material.
Leave me to the thing I love. I love acting. But being called 'the greatest living actress' - a designation not even my mother would sanction - is the opposite of good or valuable or useful. It is a curse for a working actor.
All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene.
I don't know very much about, honestly, about the Middle East, and yet I've played a lot of different people from a lot of different cultures. The thing that I notice is that we're all - there is a core of humanity that travels right through every culture. And, after all, we're all from Africa originally.
If I am not confident that I can portray the character perfectly on screen, I won't even try.
I let the actions of my life stand for what I am as a human being. Contend with that, not the words.
It's a good thing to imagine yourself doing something you think you can't. I do that every day because, basically, if I had it my way, I'd just stay home and think about what I'm having for supper.
You can't suppress the things that make us human. It's pointless to try.
It's bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children's health than the pediatrician.
People at agencies and studios, including the parent boards, might look around the table at the decision-making level and feel something is wrong if half their participants are not women. Because our tastes are different, what we value is different. Not better, different.
I had this sort of idolatry for certain actors who preceded me, people who inspired me, so I'm honored to be that way for young actors.
Don't waste so much time thinking about how much you weigh. There is no more mind-numbing, boring, idiotic, self-destructive diversion from the fun of living.
How you first meet the public is how the industry sees you. You can't argue with them. That's their perception.
I have a very clear understanding of what my voice is. It's like a B voice. It hovers around B-minus, B-plus. I have great friends who are wonderful singers, and I know I'll never be able to do that. But singing through a character is something I can do.
I want to feel my life while I'm in it.
You just have to keep on doing what you do. It's the lesson I get from my husband; he just says, Keep going. Start by starting.
I get a trickling few scripts that I'm lucky enough that some of them are great. I don't get loads of scripts.
What does it take to be the first female anything? It takes grit, and it takes grace.
I am a humanist. I am for nice, easy balance.
I need to go where people are serious about acting.
The interesting thing about being a mother is that everyone wants pets, but no one but me cleans the kitty litter.
You can't strategize falling in love, can you? It's never worked. People love you the most and set you up, and it doesn't work because you can't predict these things. You fall in love serially.
People say, When you have children, everything changes. But maybe things are awakened that were already there.
I have a very busy life, and not many people who have a career and four kids go out a lot to the movies.
I think you have to listen to the people who are deeply unhappy. You have to find the source of it and not overreact to the craziness in it.
The more you are in this business, the more humbled by it you become.
Some people are filled by compassion and a desire to do good, and some simply don't think anything's going to make a difference.
I think we all think we sound really good in the shower, where there's that nice reverb, and the water's drowning you out, and there is some liberation in the freedom of being totally alone and really going for it.
I know movies are a function of our dream world. And when you project yourself on screen, it's easier to project yourself into what you were, not what you are.
I have a very good life - I'm lucky enough not to be deprived.
Obsession is an attractive thing. People who are really, really interested and good at one thing and smart are attractive, if they're men.
I always feel like I can't do it, that I can't go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all.
I think your self emerges more clearly over time.
Interestingly, young people don't come to you for advice. Especially the ones who are related to you.
I couldn't care less about fashion. If I had taken any clothes home, they would have remained in my closet for the rest of their existence.
