Quotes

I was very shy, but was desperate to meet boys. So my sister told me to be a cheerleader. I didn't make cheerleading squad, so I thought, "Why not try out for a play?" As soon as I did I found out I absolutely loved it. I could cry and scream and laugh, but in a controlled environment.

To tell you the truth, if Oliver Stone had wanted Pat Nixon to wear a G-string and swing from a chandelier, I would have played it that way.

I was a very good girl for a long time, that's what really drew me to acting. The stage was the perfect place to be outrageous, to be sad, to be angry, to be all these different things.

Over 50% of Americans don't agree with the administration [of President George W. Bush]; that's a lot of people. But they don't get the press. I know myself and my friends in New York were devastated after the last election [2004]. We could hardly stand up it was so devastating. And those are the people that I'm around a fair amount.

I'm hard to pin down. I tend to look different in films. I get recognized sometimes. But I just live my life. I get on the bus, I get on the subway, it's not a problem. I think of myself more as a character actor than that ingénue leading lady, who started out something like Michelle Pfeiffer or Jessica Lange. I'm a bit quirkier than that.

I think I knew acting was what I wanted to do. But I was from this small town and there was no place for an adult to recognize it. I think the cheerleading thing was a way of performing. There was the boy element, but more important was the performance element. Once I got to high school and auditioned for a play and got in, I thought this was really what I was looking for. Once that had got cleared up, from 13 on, that was it.

I was the good girl. The straight A student, on the honor roll, part of the choir . . . I played the cello badly. I did plays.

I think there's been a tendency to place me in what has been characterized as the "moral center" of the film. In films like The Ice Storm (1997), The Crucible (1996) and Nixon (1995), that's the sort of the persona that emerged.

Acting gave me the opportunity to do outrageous things. It allowed me to be sad, happy, angry and lustful, even if it was just vicariously.

It's such a great feeling to make people laugh. I know I've made people cry or want to slit their wrists, but to make people laugh is a very intoxicating, wonderful thing.