If you aspired and wanted to get on in life, as so many immigrants families did, Margaret Thatcher was your champion, your role model, your heroine.

I've tried to be inclusive in my '2B' series. Over the course of three books, I wrote African-American characters, a paraplegic character, gay and lesbian characters, a bisexual, Jewish heroine, a multiracial hero, Korean and Chinese-American characters, and a multiracial supporting character.

Okay, I am happy with the way I look, but I have never, never, ever thought of myself as a 'pretty girl.' Honestly. When I read some of these scripts I'm sent, and they describe the heroine as 'incredibly beautiful,' I wonder why they sent it to me.

I feel that, historically, the Art Deco period has the most resonance for me. As a person, it has to be the plucky Clara Bow, the heroine of American silent movies of the 1920s. She embodied feminine dressing mixed with men's style. All this then evolved into the exquisite style and simplicity of Coco Chanel.

I am not against two-heroine films.

I started as a child artist, and not as a heroine, as most would think. I was performing on stage once when the late Bimal Roy saw me and asked me if I would work in films. I was too tiny. Without realising, I just said yes.

Nowadays, all actresses wear gowns and trot all over the place. However, our sarees would look more elegant, and yet so appealing. So, my advice to all heroines is: start wearing sarees as well, to look more beautiful!

I have been very selective in the South because I was always offered the biggest films. In Bollywood, things are different because multi-starrers are a norm. All big heroines are happy to be part of a big movie.

I love that Moana is a heroine, and I hope people take that away, and that you most certainly can be the heroine, or hero, of your own story.

Moana is definitely a Disney heroine. She's wonderful, empowered, empowering.

Moana is an incredible heroine. She's strong... She's got her two feet firmly planted. She's definitely grounded.

I was watching 'Heroine,' and I really liked Kareena Kapoor a lot!

I've found in the past that the more closely I identify with the heroine, the less completely she emerges as a person. So from the first novel I've been learning techniques to distance myself from the characters so that they are not me and I don't try to protect them in ways that aren't good for the story.

I feel that a heroine or a leading character is someone who stays back with you, and I would like to believe that all my characters have stayed with people.

Everywhere in the society, even my extended family, when they got to know that I am going to be an actor, they were very worried because there is a lot of negativity attached to my craft or being a heroine.

Ariel got me into animation. She was the first Disney heroine that really felt alive. She felt like a real young woman.

The heroines in 'That's What She Said' are flawed, messy, damaged, hilarious and culpable and not really concerned about being acceptable to the audience in any traditional sense, which for me is what makes them all the more gorgeous. And the fearless truth of that is what makes it funny.

Perfect heroines, like perfect heroes, aren't relatable, and if you can't put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, not only will they not inspire you, but the book will be pretty boring.

I think as women we've always been very used to growing up reading and identifying with male protagonists, especially in fantasy. There's a saying in publishing that girls will read about boys, but boys will only read about boys, and it's important to give women strong heroines.

I just don't see myself as the heroine in my own narrative.

Don't forget to let your reader feel the emotions of the scene. If you get all tied up with the mechanics of where the hero's hands are and not about how they make the heroine feel, then the scene will read flat.

'Emma' is my favorite Jane Austen novel - one of my favorite novels period; a novel about intelligence outsmarting itself, about a complicated, nuanced, irresistible heroine who does everything wrong.

Unlike novels with a hero or two heroines, in 'One Amazing Thing,' all the characters tell stories they've never told anyone before, so all the voices become equally important.

I can't expect to be playing the lead and romancing heroines, so I'll do what I'm best suited for and I'm doing that happily.

I think, with the gay liberation movement has had need for heroes and heroines, and it would be rather nice to have Abraham Lincoln as your poster boy, wouldn't it?

I loved everything about being ten, eleven, and twelve years old, and seem to make most of my heroines and heroes that age so I can reexperience all those pitfalls and wonderful discoveries. It helps me to figure out my own life when I write from that eleven year old place!

Being sad and being depressed are two different things. Also, people going through depression don't look so, while someone sad will look sad. The most common reaction is, 'How can you be depressed? You have everything going for you. You are the supposed number one heroine and have a plush home, car, movies... What else do you want?'

I don't want to be typecast as a heroine who does a certain kind of cinema, which is why I experiment with the types of films that I do. But yes, I won't deny that romantic love stories or romantic comedies are what I enjoy doing the most, because as an audience those are the kind of films that I like watching.

I'm sorry, but to ask an audience these days to invest three hours in a show requires your heroine be an understandable and fully rounded character.

Theron says that she was intrigued by the psychological demands of the material in playing the complicated 'Queen Ravenna', and Stewart's performance as 'Snow White', the fairest of them all, in her first action-heroine role, kept her literally in constant motion.

Darcy, the heroine of 'Something Blue,' is quite shallow and opinionated. At one point, she commented that she dislikes 'gingers,' i.e., men with red hair. I received several emails from fiery redheads who said they were offended by 'my' comments. I had to remind them that it is fiction.