Diet is weird. It's elusive. I just try to listen to my body.
Laura Dern
Stay true to your own voice, and don't worry about needing to be liked or what anybody else thinks. Keep your eyes on your own paper.
I like movies about longing and desperation, and dark and light things, stories about people struggling to raise children, and to have relationships and be intimate with each other.
Wild at Heart made a few people angry-they thought I was exploiting women by showing that when a woman says no she really means yes.
When man decides he can control nature, he's in deep trouble.
I was raised Catholic, and my grandmother taught me to stay. As a teenager, I thought if you went on a date, you should stay for a couple of years. I didn't realize that if he wasn't your cup of tea, you got to leave.
Growth doesn't hurt. This is what I've learned. In the end, it doesn't hurt. It hurts while it's happening. But in the end, you know, for life, for parenting, and for the arts, it's not a bad - not a bad thing to try for.
What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?
I wanted to go to Jupiter. That was my plan from day one, and David Lynch gave me the ticket.
We like our archetypes and heroes to be what they are at face value. And life doesn't work out like that.
There's always a side of a woman that likes a man from the other side of the tracks.
I think it's about not just the crisis you're in, but how do you get to the other side? How do we heal? How do we survive this experience while remaining hopeful instead of filled with despair? That's what interests me.
When you become a parent, you really care that you get that right, and you care about nothing else.
All kids are selfish. I wanted to do homework and do my thing and call my agent. My mother's needs weren't in my mind at that moment.
To stay true to your art is such a complicated journey, and Dad clearly has done it.
My daughter wants to do yoga with me and wants to be in the theater thing, and I can't tell her, 'Don't be an actress.' My son loves guitar and loves to be in a band and wants his iTunes downloaded with all this old-school hip-hop so he understands where hip-hop came from.
It excites me to go to a movie and be reminded that I'm human, and I'm filled with opposites, and I'm built with flaws. Part of growth and healing is recognizing that.
Ben Stiller, who I love and who is a friend and is such an incredible actor - he's hilarious, obviously, but I thought his performance in 'Greenberg' was extraordinary.
It's a strange world, as David Lynch would say.
My favorite books are psychology, self-help, and I'm fascinated by Jung, by dream work.
I care a lot about big food and everyone's right to healthy, nutritious food and what's caused obesity in America and obesity in children in America.
Like anything else, acting can become boring - a chore, really - if there isn't any challenge. And I like taking challenges. Just when people think they have me figured out, I like to surprise them.
It's really fun to act like a bimbo. But it's fun to act like a bimbo only when people know that you really aren't one.
I certainly wouldn't mind if 'Jurassic Park' turns out to be commercially successful, and somebody says, 'Hey, you were in a box-office hit, and if you want to do another movie, we'll give you five million dollars to make it.'
I will be working with David Lynch when I'm 80.
I care a lot about fragrance not only in my life, but sometimes it feels right while working on a character.
I love Clint Eastwood, and I wish to work with him again. He's completely irreverent about everything, including his own beautiful work.
You must always watch when David Lynch makes anything.
If you're looking to be loved for a part, it's great and enticing to be adorable in a romantic comedy. But then, as an actor, you get stuck.
I'm interested in human nature. That's why I chose to become an actor.
Luckily, I was raised by people who'd already seen all the yuck stuff, which is why they originally didn't want me to act. I understood the difference between getting a part at a Hollywood party and getting a job.
At the end of the day, you have to sit with the scripts and decide where your heart is.
Going to the Academy Awards is something I remember since I was six, when I went with my mom for the first time, 14 with my dad, you know, and there I am, at 22, 23, whatever I was, sitting next to my mom. You know, and then again, there with my dad. Like, there's a beauty to it, and I care deeply about film history.
When you're first reading the script and thinking about playing the part, it's slightly daunting. It's easy to question, 'Is an audience going to like me? And is that my job?'
With 'Mask,' 'Smooth Talk' and 'Blue Velvet,' I loved the specific experiences so much. Each one was a specific filmmaker with a specific vision.
I have never been someone who applied 'work begets work' to my career, sometimes unfortunately.
Love means a lot to me, and I love loving, and I love boys.
A lot of people have asked whether acting is in my genes. I don't know if anyone is born to act. And it certainly wasn't pushed on me. It was something I wanted to do.
I grew up with a tribe of amazing women, but certainly my mother and my godmother really modeled women as actors.
Sadly, half of marriages end in divorce. Half of my girl friends and male friends have been through one, and their kids are doing great. There's no shame around it - unless you want to project that on to yourself - but certainly there's no longer cultural shame. Everyone is walking through it.
The really courageous and bold thing is to make movies about human behaviour.
For me, the key is years of the blessed filmmakers I've worked with giving me permission to be bold and jump off cliffs and to be boundaryless. I would put David Lynch at the top of that list.
Whatever character you play, it gives you the chance to expose another side of yourself that maybe you've never felt comfortable with, or never knew about.
It's my deepest interest as an actor: I love discovering how human beings work, how their flaws reveal themselves - how to learn and grow from that - and how characters teach me things as a woman and as a parent.
I've always loved film more than theater.
The bad news is, I have worked less than I have liked. The good news is, I can look back on my body of work and feel truly proud of the work I have done.
There are artists or filmmakers or cinematographers who have had long careers who, maybe to reinvent themselves or just to stay in a secure place, layer it on or ham it up, if I can use that expression, or make grand choices that don't feel as authentic as what they did to make us fall in love with them in the first place.
I'm a natural blonde. I was a towhead as a kid, and then it got ashier when I was 18.
I don't think you have to be in these serious, heavy, independent little movies to be an actor. Some of the most interesting acting I've seen is on cable television.
I knew you had to go in and audition and maybe they'd hire you, and that's where you start. I had a good understanding about press: that it's the actor's responsibility to publicize his or her films.
