Look, it's one of the great mysteries of the world, I cannot answer that question. I think I'm vaguely blonde. To be perfectly frank, I don't know.

If I'm not good at acting, I'm not good at anything else.

I live my life parallel with my work, and they are both equally important. I'm always amazed how much people talk abpeoout celebrity and fame. I don't understand the attraction.

I'm one of those strange beasts who really likes a corset.

That's why so many people want to play Hamlet: because it's a completely demarked role, and the actor playing it has to be prepared, through the language, to allow the audience to see into who he is.

I love theatre - it's where I started - and I've directed a play myself. I'm not sure if I want to direct a film, but certainly, as an actress, I'm always thinking, 'Surely this must be my last film.'

I think good theaters are really important. They allow you to exist in a space with other people.

“An actress once advised me, 'Make sure you do your own laundry - it will keep you honest.'”

“It was only when I realized how actors have the power to move people that I decided to pursue acting as a career.”

My relationship with American audiences is the exact same as it always has been. They never came to see my films, and they don't come now.

I never start editing a film until it's completely shot; I don't edit along the way, ever. When it's finished I come in here [screening room] and we start with reel one, scene one and start editing shot by shot by shot until we're finished.

I can make films. And some of them come out good, and some of them come out better, and some of them come out worse. But I've been very lucky over the years to be able to sustain the length of career that I've had.

“In truth, we don't know which of our acts in the present will shape the future. But we have to behave as if everything we do matters. Because it might.” 

Acting was always in the back of my head.

When I think about it, I was working very hard the summer before I applied to graduate school. I was going to the library every day in the summer. I read a play a day for about three months. I was taking audition classes, and I was reciting lines to myself and acting as my own scene partner. But I was having fun.

I had taken an acting class at Berkeley - I was on the track team, and a friend of mine on the team said, 'You should take an acting class. It's just like recess.' So I viewed it as a simple credit.

When I was in college, it was on the recommendation of a friend of mine. He recommended that I take an acting class, and so I kind of did. I was very open to feedback and open to suggestions. I had a little bit of space in my schedule, and I guess, as the story goes, I went into an acting class, and I kind of got the bug for it.

I don't know that many Australian actors in Los Angeles, but there are a few of us. I mean, we kind of get together occasionally, but I wouldn't say it's an alliance or anything like that.

Everyone brings their own particular skill set to the job, and acting training can work for a lot of actors, and it can't. I've seen a lot of really good actors go into acting schools and then come out a little bit corrupted.

Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a polluted mind, suffering will follow you, as the wheels of the oxcart follow the footsteps of the ox.

One who acts on truth is happy in this world and beyond.

Men acquire particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way

It is not enough to be compassionate, we must act.

It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act.