Because of my own insecurities about the way I look, I do sometimes sabotage the looks of my characters by making them as homely as possible. I've never done a glamour part. I'd like to some day, though I don't know if I could pull it off.

I'm trained in the theater, and acting, for me, is about the imaginative life I create for myself, not about basing it on something real. I think that whatever I create becomes the reality for the audience.

I went to my school careers counselors and said I wanted to be an actor, and they didn't know what to do. They showed me catalogues with pretty campuses and said, 'Oh, look, there's a theater building. Why don't you go there?'

I was completely naive about the business of being an actor. My family didn't go to the theater or to the movies. We watched television like every 1960s small-town American family, and I certainly never thought about being on TV. I thought I was going to be a classical actor in the grand tradition.

I became interested in educating people in the variety of ways in which women can express their emotion. Which is much easier to do in a large role than in a supporting role to a male protagonist. In general, the women in a supporting role to a male protagonist - cry a lot.

I'm not really that interested in going back to playing small supporting roles.

The crew on 'Three Bilboards,' by the way, is one of the best I've ever worked with. And that's not hyperbole.

I swear a lot; I always have. So does my husband. Our son, surprisingly, does not swear much at all.

I'm from working-class, blue-collar America, and I don't believe that people in that socioeconomic strata wait until they're 40 to have children.

Something happened culturally: No one is supposed to age past 45 - sartorially, cosmetically, attitudinally.

Everybody dresses like a teenager. Everybody dyes their hair. Everybody is concerned about a smooth face.

We are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species. There's no desire to be an adult.

Adulthood is not a goal. It's not seen as a gift.

I want to be revered. I want to be an elder; I want to be an elderess.

I have not mutated myself in any way.

We don't need a lot of initiatives for women in film; what we need is money.

One of the reasons I am successful as a producer is that I've been a very successful housewife.

All the skills of housewifery are the ones I'm using as a producer.

Unfortunately, any girl - unless you're playing the action hero - is going to end up at some point handcuffed, gagged, and waiting for the hero to save her.

My politics are private, but many of my feminist politics cross over into my professional life.

I portray female characters, so I have the opportunity to change the way people look at them. Even if I wasn't consciously doing that, it would happen anyway just because of how I present as a woman, or as a person. I present in a way that's not stereotypical, even if I'm playing a stereotypical role.

I know I'm profane. And outspoken.

I went to high school in a steel town in Pennsylvania.

It's like some weird excuse for high school kids to vomit. It's not good. It's stupid. I'm sure that's not what St. Patrick's Day is supposed to be about, but who knows.

Even though I'm an actor, I've gone to productions where there has been someone whose work is known in film, and you can't take your eyes off them. It unbalances the production. Whether they're good or not, it doesn't matter.

Yale? I was at Yale on a scholarship.

Here's what I have at my advantage: I've never been a personality. I've always been a character actor.

Unless I'm on a stage, I don't want to be the event in someone's day.

Long-format television is a better way to tell a female story.

I am not a director or a writer, but a filmmaker.

I read books. Remember those? I read them, on paper.

I buy books, I have shelves of books. I love to read.

I have a very short attention span.

It was really fascinating for everyone involved in 'Fargo' that Marge Gunderson became the iconic character she did. I think it was something about the cultural zeitgeist and what was happening with women in the workplace.

Guess what? I am an ordinary person.

Female characters in literature are full. They're messy: they've got runny noses and burp and belch. Unfortunately, in film, female characters don't often have that kind of richness.

In comparison to other women in the world, perhaps I'm seen as smaller. But I've never had a problem thinking of myself as a large woman.

I think that ageism is a cultural illness; it's not a personal illness.

I think that cosmetic enhancements in my profession are just an occupational hazard. But I think, more culturally, I'm interested in starting the conversation about aging gracefully and how, instead of making it a cultural problem, we make it individuals' problems.

It could be partly my taste. It's just my belief that there are female characters that will benefit from not being vulnerable.

There's something healing about tears.

The last scene in 'Moonlight,' that's one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen on film in my lifetime. You see two men showing such tenderness towards each other. And it's bold; it's deep. It's complex. It's profound.

I'm not really interested in promoting 'Olive' as a series about depression or mental illness.

I learned how to read in second grade, and I entered a summer contest at my local library in Chattanooga, Tennessee. If you read more books than anybody else, you got your Polaroid up on the bulletin board, and I did.

I'm really interested in playing my age.

I like being my age. I kind of have a political thing about it.

I've always known that I'll have a career for the rest of my life because they'll always make movies about men, and men need women in their lives. But, when it comes to telling a woman's story, they're complex, circular, and not genre-driven.

We wrote 'Olive Kitteridge' as six hours, and they asked us to make it in four.

My son smelled like a cinnamon bun, and that smell entered into my biological being, and it became an imperative that I keep him alive at all costs, so then there's this monster - this tiger or lion - that comes forward in you to protect them. And it doesn't stop. It doesn't matter if they become men or women.

My father was a minister, and it was more my mother that had the responsibility of making sure the family put out an outward of appearance of living what he was preaching. She was the PR.