The more you know about the world, the more resources you have in terms of things that can inform your character or the circumstances that surround your character.

Everybody reads for me. I was never weird about that. I never minded coming in and reading. They should know if I'm the right person, and I should know if I want to do a movie.

Casting is a long process for me. I take a lot of time.

I will always love psychology, and the basis of psychology is family.

Acting just happens to be my skill, but I think I would probably be just as happy being a technician or entering into the film business in some other way.

I never know what's going to move me. I'm always surprised. And it's always a mystery to the people who work with me.

There are conscious reasons and unconscious reasons why I pick something. You know, I have to be moved by the story and usually that means it has to touch me in some kind of personal place.

Adolescence is a tough one to be a child actor.

Most actors don't really have a director's sensibility. They have an actor's sensibility.

I was never the ingenue or the pretty girlfriend of Tom Cruise in a movie. I didn't have that career, so I don't have to compete on that level.

'Silence Of The Lambs' was not something people expected me to do.

As an actor, I'm attracted to drama; as a director, it's humor - because it's the story of my life, and I can't be that serious about it. Being alone is a big theme in all my movies, both as a director and as an actress.

I make dark dramas, movies about people living in desperate fear who then overcome that fear and find a heroic side to themselves.

I saw leaving college as an opportunity to do something different with my life. I always thought that becoming an academic was going to be my path.

I do almost all my movies in French. I dub them.

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.

I don't make movies because I love to act. I make movies because I like to make movies, and I like to be a part of that process.

It's hard to get personal films off the ground, and it's hard developing them.

I don't find acting and directing schizophrenic in any way. I find it completely easy to move between the two.

I don't direct so that I can have an identity and so I can go on to CGI movies. I had a big identity as an actor, and that's not what I'm looking for from directing. Directing is a whole different goal.

Every movie changes you. The process of making a film changes you.

I'd always need a creative outlet. But sometimes, I do fantasize what my life would be like if I weren't famous.

I read more than I do anything else, probably. I read about three books a week.

I'm a technician. I don't go for the get-into-the-role stuff. I read the lines and play the scenes.