There are so many ebbs and flows in life, but when you're raising small children, your family means everything.

We never left a set until we'd trashed it.

Buddhism has had a major effect on who I am and how I think about the world. What I have learned is that I like all religions, but only parts of them.

For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.

Fun wouldn't be the right word... it was the most difficult, challenging, physical, extraordinary stretch I've ever had to make, in all those wild regards.

I spent the first fourteen years of my life convinced that my looks were hideous. Adolescence is painful for everyone, I know, but mine was plain weird.

I'm an actress and mom, and I probably don't have enough of an active spiritual life. And I don't know why people run around calling themselves by the names of religions when they don't actually practise them.

I'm lucky to have been raised in the most beautiful place - Amherst, Massachusetts, state of my heart. I'm more patriotic to Massachusetts than to almost any place.

It's hard sometimes if you think a character should look a certain way and you're being pushed to do it differently. I've had fights over that. That's why it's so important that you work with good people.

Modeling is basically 'Buy more stuff! Don't you want some more stuff? It will make you look ten years younger and men will like you!' If I'd wanted to be a salesperson, I would have got a job selling.

Motherhood definitely took the focus off of my work. And I didn't mind. I had a few panics when I thought that if I wanted to work I couldn't get a job anymore and then I would get one once in a while and it would make me feel better.

It is better to have a relationship with someone who cheats on you than with someone who does not flush the toilet.

I used to be more paranoid and stressed, constantly worrying about my Plan B. But the truth is I don't have one.

Desperation is the perfume of the young actor. It's so satisfying to have gotten rid of it. If you keep smelling it, it can drive you crazy. In this business a lot of people go nuts, go eccentric, even end up dead from it. Not my plan.

Tall, sandy blonde, with sort of blue eyes, skinny in places, fat in others. An average gal.

Before I had my child, I thought I knew all the boundaries of myself, that I understood the limits of my heart. It's extraordinary to have all those limits thrown out, to realize your love is inexhaustible.

And also I think particularly as a female, you're taught to be defensive your whole life. You're taught not to be aggressive.

When asked if I consider myself Buddhist, the answer is, Not really. But it's more my religion than any other because I was brought up with it in an intellectual and spiritual environment. I don't practice or preach it, however.

Even, today, when people tell me I'm beautiful, I do not believe a word of it.

I had to go to a mirror and look at it. I couldn't picture myself in my own head. I had no image beyond a stick figure. I wasn't a mean person as a kid, or dumb, and something has to be said to justify excluding you.