“I always, always meant to be on stage. I only ended up even auditioning for television and movies because I was understudying a Turgenev play on Broadway and was so broke that, when I got a mini-series, I had to take it and was so ashamed because I was such a snob.”

“Before 'Schindler's List,' I wouldn't have believed movies had a lot of power for social change.”

“I mean, why am I considered an 'it girl?' Because I'm in a lot of movies right now or am on the covers of magazines? I just hope there is something solid behind that. Because here's the thing with 'it girl' status. It's great and amazing that anybody is saying that at all. But how long does that last?”

“I love movies with spectacle but spectacle can be a performance, it doesn't have to be a creature.”

“The nature of the movies is different than it was five years ago, and they're all driven by the possibilities of CGI, which means you can make anything happen on screen that you can possibly desire.”

“My family and our neighbors and friends thought of Africa and its Africans as extensions of the stereotyped characters that we saw in movies and on television in films such as 'Tarzan' and in programs such as 'Ramar of the Jungle' and 'Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.'”

“As a kid, I liked the 'Halloween' movies and 'Nightmare On Elm Street' and all that kind of stuff. But as an adult, I really don't watch much horror, to be honest.”

“I mean, movies in general tend to sort of portray time, space and identity as these very solid things. Time moves forward. Space is what it is. You are you, and you're always you.”

“I really like children to watch my movies.”