I believe that anyone with a bit of guidance can act.

I have grown up seeing success and failure.

Roles don't fascinate me. It is the narrative, the screenplay that is fascinating.

Failure affects me hard.

People expect star kids to be perfect - horse-riding, fighting.

I want the audience to watch my films, and that is what I value more than any awards.

I feel that entertainment happens when fact and fiction is balanced.

It doesn't matter to me how I look on screen. What matters to me is how I connect with the audience.

Failure is part and parcel of the process of experimenting with roles and films.

I am not affected or carried away by success or failure.

My films may not have a great opening, but I am not bothered about it. Whatever the numbers be, I want those viewers who come for my films to be excited about watching the movie.

Mistakes happen, and then you try to overcome those. I like that process.

When I listen to a basic thought, I try to visualise the cinema in it. Sometimes it is dark, sometimes boyish, sometimes amateurish. It is a trial and error method. But the bottom line is that I want to entertain the audience.

I give my best to each role that I do.

People often ask whether marriage has changed me. I didn't marry because I had to change.

I have always maintained that the audience should take a call on this. Its up to them to decide whether they want to see a pirated version or not. They should understand the effort and amount of hard work that go into a film.

I want my films to do the talking. I feel if people have to understand me better, I should do more good films. I just want them to know me through my films.

Let me make something clear: I can't do anything in particular to make others laugh. I do what is necessary for a character. The body language of the character may make others laugh.

When I am with my friends, I am comfortable.

I like to laugh and to make people laugh.

The characters I portray are an extension of what I've seen, heard, or read, and so what you see in my films are how I understand life.

What I look for in a project is whether the storyline excites me.

When you are talking about human emotions, stardom doesn't matter.

As an actor, you create a character from your understanding of what you have heard and your observations. Eventually, every film is an extension of the images that I have seen or what I have heard or read somewhere.

People know me through my characters. I don't think they have any idea about the individual that I am. They know I am a director's son, and I am married to an actress.

Did you know you're supposed to soap and scrub for as long as it takes to sing 'Happy Birthday' twice?

Wildfires can leave the land with burn scars that last for years.

I'm a snowflake. And so are you. Your children are snowflakes. And so are mine. And those who protest the loudest about not being snowflakes? I can see your six-fold ice crystals from here! Because every person, empirically, is unique.

'Man cave' seems retrograde, but 'she shed' seems progressive. Or maybe it's just a place for me to eat embarrassing amounts of chocolate in private.

If you're ever bcc'd, do not go near 'reply all.' 'Bcc' is 'blind carbon copy.' It means you're a fly on the wall, dude! If you hit reply all, it's beyond bad etiquette to out the person who gave you the superpower of invisibility. It's like screaming, 'I'm a spy!'

Twerking takes its place in a long line of dance moves deemed immoral, even apocalyptic. The waltz was called sinful because it demanded dangerously close contact between dance partners. In 1914, the tango earned a papal denunciation for being 'damaging to the soul.'

The option to freeze one's eggs is just about the most empowering choice a single woman who knows she wants to be a mother can make.

I know how much sleep I need, how much time on the elliptical I need, and how much chocolate that buys me.

I'm not actually perishing, but I do feel like I die a little every time someone uses 'literally' to mean 'really.'

If you grasp the bathroom door handle to exit without using a paper towel, you're right back where you started, with who-knows-whose germs on your hands.

My husband is a graduate of two Ivy League universities - with a degree in Classics! - and he sounds like a David Mamet character when I hear him on a business call.

Well-done eyelash extensions make you look beautiful and doe-eyed without a lick of makeup.

Women are blessed with lots and lots of extra ways to win or lose validation. If you're a woman, you'll be judged on your beauty and your wit and how often you smile. You'll be judged on how much hair you have in some places and not in others.

We all think Al Gore invented email so we could save time and save paper, to save trees. And that includes phone trees.

I am an approval junkie.

Sometimes art helps illuminate science.

Harassment doesn't just happen to 'social observers' and 'comedians' - women who express themselves publicly are reliably verbally attacked online and in person, not for their substance but for their form.

Here's a simple guideline: if five names or fewer are cc'd, just go nuts and hit 'reply all.' But if more than five folks appear in the cc line, pause. Give it a thought. Some people are promiscuous and cc dozens of people who don't need to know each other's business.

I don't mean to brag, but my water filter curates tap water, offering moi the finest combination of H, 2, and O available.

It was my husband who had to open all the baby shower gifts which were haunting me in their candy-colored gift wrap - thank you notes demanding to be written.

It's one thing to decry and defy political correctness in the name of efficiently achieving clarity or revealing an honest truth. But it's quite another thing entirely to support name-calling and nastiness.

They say there are no atheists in foxholes, and in the foxhole of my divorce, I found solace in walking to St. Patrick's Cathedral and lighting candles.

It's beyond TMI - oversharing is not just too much information; it's incessant sharing of non-information - breaking news about your gluten-free diet complete with duck face selfies.

I'm not proud that, in my time, I've tried to harness the power of prayer to fit into a pair of jeans.

I entered my egg-freezing adventure from a feeling of lack - a lack of fertility, of the right partner, of biological time. But this perceived lack actually produced abundance - of options, time, peace of mind, and microscopic chances of a child.