I appreciate my instincts, but my instincts can be dead wrong. Circumspection can give you time.

I get cold really quickly, but I don't care. I like weather. I never understand why people move someplace so that they can avoid weather.

I've never directed, but it must be humbling.

The rhythm of my career has always been very static, staccato and then silent, and then a lot of work, and then none.

I really admire people who are extraordinarily tolerant and patient.

I've never worked as much as I would've wanted to, and that's why I end up doing a lot of stage as well, because stage is a full course meal.

More and more movies have been pressured to allow reporters and TV cameras to come onto the set while you're working, and I find that a real violation.

I would love to work more - I really would - but there is not a lot of stuff around and the stuff that is around is not very complicated; it tends to lie a little flat.

I act probably a lot more than you see. I happen to choose movies that don't have much of a life, or I choose movies that are shown on cable instead of as features.

I think it's really odd, too, that the public is so privy to how much money the actors make and what movies cost. It seems to me to be beside the point. When I go to a movie I really don't want to think about the money. I want to see the story.

I don't offer advice to actors only because I've seen actors become successful through ways that would never even occur to me or that wouldn't work for me.

I've enjoyed the process of understanding who I am through my work and who I am in relation to others: the intense collaboration that acting requires and thrives in.

I am a huge fan of Cronenberg, all his movies.

My sister took me as her own. My mum had a lot of help raising me. That's what happens in large families: your siblings raise you.

Privacy is paradise.

Man, I would have loved to have been fully cognisant of the power of Janis Joplin. I would have loved to have been part of the revolution.

I object to the actual phrase 'Follow me.' You've gotta be kidding! Why would I want to follow anybody else? Nor do I want them to follow me. The machinations of my life, the banalities - they're mine. They belong to me.

I reveal all of myself. I bring all of myself to my roles. You only see me. You don't see anything else but me. That is who's there. They're manifestations of my own self.

I never thought about moving to L.A.; I always wanted to be in New York. I moved there, and now I still have a kind of love affair with the city.

Most of the time I live a fully anonymous life, which is the way I like it.

My career has never really been a vertical kind of thing. I mean, it's always been a bit difficult for me.

I remember that when I was in my 30s, a hot age for an actress, lots of offers were coming in, but nothing was great, and I didn't work for 18 months. It was at a really fruitful age, and I wanted to work. There was nothing coming down the pipeline that I thought was good - and then I got 'The Piano.'

I'm a leading lady character actor; I don't fit in one slot simply. I've always been used to a certain amount of struggle, and that prepared me wonderfully for a mature age.

Sometimes it's very difficult to do a movie that's good and then have that movie make it to the light of day.

I really would love to take a big break and not be photographed, not perform.

I grew up on a farm. The worst-looking chickens are the best layers. The ones that are the scraggliest... those are usually the ones that are really cooking.

I think that, initially, I was most passionate about music and particularly about playing the piano. I started playing when I was nine, and I was obsessed with it, really. I wouldn't even go spend the night at a friend's unless they had a piano. But I didn't have the chops, the extraordinary talent to be able to play the piano professionally.

I found acting when I was 14, when I got cast in the chorus in a high school play, 'The Boyfriend.' In my high school, we did mainly musicals, so I just started doing nothing but musicals for years and loved it.

To me, being creative is a very fragile thing. The environment in which one can create is a very particular one, and somehow, I've always felt the need to be very protective of that.

Often, in the movie business, they need somebody who will garner box office because they need to pay for the movie. So the people who are in movies that make a lot of money are the people who most often get cast in studio pictures. In my career, I've never been a box office name.

'Saving Grace' was a full stretch-out - literally, physically, spiritually, psychologically. And I needed to take a year-and-a-half off when it was over.

Sometimes you have to marinate instead of making a quick decision. I appreciate my instincts, but my instincts can be dead wrong. Circumspection can give you time.

People have always searched for answers. That's why we have religion; people have always been seeking some relief from their own mortality.

I love wearing wigs because they're instantly transformational.

'Top Of The Lake' is a great story with a beginning, and a middle and an end, about darkness - it's like the heart of darkness. And everybody has got one. When I was reading it, I couldn't put it down, and I wanted to know what was going to happen next.

It's always been my way to move about a little more horizontally. My career has never been like a shooting star.

I can very much enjoy taking a year off. Whereas some people would feel crippled by that, I can feel enlarged by it. And then I also like to work nonstop, maybe for a year-and-a-half, and then take a year off.

I think Ada in 'The Piano' is the most interior character I've ever had the chance to play, either on the stage or in anything I've done for film or TV.

I don't mind at all venturing off to do a television movie if it's gonna give me something new to mess around in my mind, to turn around in.

I don't believe in angels, and I'm not a religious person.

What is God, and how do you believe in him - how do you not believe? It's a question the world continues to tussle with. People's beliefs get them in a lot of conflicts.

I've always had to move between a couple of years of unemployment, where offers are not provocative enough to take, and seasons where I work nonstop for a year. It's always been an erratic rhythm.

Feature films seem geared toward very large budgets, action, broad comedy. That seems to dominate all year where it used to be relegated to summer.

After 'Broadcast News,' I could have played that same part, but I didn't want to. So I didn't follow it up with a hit.

A play is a hard thing, particularly in L.A. It's less expensive than in New York, but there's also less of a commitment to people doing plays than in New York. So it's a strange battle.

I don't make decisions just on the character I'm supposed to play. Sometimes it's based on the director, sometimes it's based on the story, sometimes I need money, or sometimes I'm just starved to work.

What people have thought of me, of the turns that I've taken, has never really played into my decisions.

There were so many lead roles available when I was in my thirties. Once I hit 45, there was a real downturn. But I got an incredibly provocative, delicious lead role in a television series called 'Saving Grace,' and I loved the character.

Helen Mirren is, I think, one of the fascinating actresses. Period. She captivates people and has tremendous power and charisma because she has never cashed in on being an exquisite beauty, even though I think she is. I can't say I'm anything like her, but I hope something similar will happen with me.

People think I disappear sporadically, but I just do projects that don't get international acclaim.