I want to be inspiring to myself, to my kids, my family, and my friends.
Adolescence is a tough one to be a child actor.
The best reason to make a film is that you feel passionately about it.
It's hard to get personal films off the ground, and it's hard developing them.
I think Anna and the King is a look at Asia from the Asian perspective, reflecting the Asian experience, which is very rare.
I cannot believe in God when there is no scientific evidence for the existence of a supreme being and creator.
I don't need to be Tom Cruise. I just need to work forever.
I love more than anything looking at a movie scene by scene and seeing the intention behind it.
I did a couple of plays in junior high school, maybe high school, and then I did a play in college.
I've got that Irish thing going on. Lots of Irish in my background.
I made, like, five movies while I was in college. I think they just weren't memorable movies. I've taken breaks as the years have gone on - I burn out every once in a while.
a woman who struggles to recover from a brutal attack and sets out on a dark, psychological and physical journey for revenge and justice.
I don't know if I see myself as really an action hero, but I like doing physical movies and I like doing movies where the writing is very lean.
As I've said before, and I still hold to, I truly am the most boring person alive. And if there was a great investigation to be found at the end of the resume, it would be, the most boring person alive.
Interestingly, when you do films, sometimes you have conscious reasons, things that you were looking for, or stuff that you were trying to do. And then, you see the film and you think, "Wow, it ended up being something totally different!"
Boys are easy. I mean, there are just a lot of bruises when they're young. With boys, you get a lot of accidental jabs in the eye and stepping on your feet, and those tantrums they cause when they don't want to leave the toy store.
What I didn't realize is how completely consumed I would be by my sons. I didn't know that the rest of my life would become so little a priority.
You guys might be surprised, but I am not Honey Boo Boo Child.
I think I missed all of the wonderful things ... I missed the control that you have in film, and I missed getting it right, really getting it right, the way you hope people will see it. All of the things that people love about theater - the fact that it changes every night and that it's so spontaneous - all of those things just frighten me.
Casting is a long process for me. I take a lot of time.
I aspire to be able to appreciate and review a director based on their accomplishments and based on who they are and what they bring to the material, regardless of their gender.
I was raised with a single mom and we had a very specific, very particular relationship. She worked with me and my job. I was almost three and we traveled everywhere together and she was really in my life in a really profound way. The most significant relationship of my life. It was beautiful and also an incredible, difficult struggle. I know how creative that life is, and how difficult it is to figure it out.
Definitely, there's a lot of trouble you come up against when you're acting and directing, about your performance. Sometimes it's hard to be objective about it. I will tend to get two takes and walk away. I don't belabor it, and it's important to me to have someone who says, "You know what? You should get another one, and maybe you should try it like that".
Part of me longs to do a job where there's not a gray area.
When I think about what part of my college experience came back in my work experience, I feel like it was learning how to read deeper, learning how to keep filling the movie up with more and more resonance.
