So how critics will perceive your film or your work, or whether your movie is going to make $100 million at the box office, or whether you are going to be winning any awards - well, you have no control over that.
I feel 100% sure that I have the career that I have today because of independent filmmaking.
From the moment this baby came into our home, those two dogs have never been more in love. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever witnessed. People keep saying, 'Oh, you're a single mom.' I'm like, 'Actually, I'm not. I've got two boys helping.'
And doing a film in that period, and having to really celebrate what they wore back then, how they sat and how they spoke. You know, what the etiquette was back then for a lady. All of those things are like putting on a wig and transforming yourself, which I love.
Modeling was never a passion of mine.
When they watch a movie and they know that you're in a relationship, you just kind of watch that constantly.
There are very, very few brands that will be brave enough to really, completely take a step back and not to try and control what is considered beautiful.
It took a while for me to be able to sit in a room of studios and financiers and say, "I'm not some hoity-toity actress looking for a vanity deal - I really know how to make a film!" In order to do that, you've got to break your f-cking back.
The idea of stuff just hanging in my closet and not being used - there's a little bit of the African in me that gets bothered by that [somewhat].
You're very in tune with, because actors are all different, and it's very tricky when you throw us all together because we all work differently. You want to get the best work out of every individual actor.
I think since I did Monster I really started understanding how hard it is for first time directors. I think there's a lot of great stories out there, but it's high risk.
At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.
I feel like I know South Africans. I feel like I know our culture.
There's always been a celebration of what is that moment, whoever I am at that moment in my life. [It] is a very real way of looking at beauty.
There's only so much you can do, but if somebody doesn't give you a chance there is nothing you can do.
I don't want to live in a world where I just kind of play on my naïveté - well if I don't know it, then it doesn't exist.
You can shave your head, but I've had to gain a lot of weight for movies, I've had to drop weight really fast for movies. I've had to learn accents or embody physical behaviors or twitches and things like that. And sometimes you take to some things easily and sometimes [not]. That's the challenge of the job.
I can be a really good mother because I'm happy.
I'd be unbelievably wrong to say there isn't such a thing as the right place, right time-luck.
The human condition is all about us pretending to be something sometimes that we're not. When you get into the core of people kind of stripping all of that away, that's for me, as an actor, always the most fun stuff to do.
I look at my career and how I'm doing it now. I feel like there is something authentic in that process that I still try not to over manipulate. When I feel something, I try to listen to that.
I want to be in a good movie, and so the narrative is way more important.
I don't want to be put on a pedestal. I don't want to be anything other than what we are. I want to just be a woman.
In the story, I think as an actor you're just trying to fit into the world.
I just want to make good movies. Honestly, the only difference for me with this stuff is that there is more people on the set.
