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.
Unfortunately, I was making comedies in my 20s, but other people didn't realize they were comedies.
I made a commitment to myself; that I wanted to be an actress, and I wanted to do films that make a difference. It has to move people.
Everything's cyclical. Having been raised by actors, I watched their careers, and the challenge is to take time off.
I care a lot about fragrance not only in my life, but sometimes it feels right while working on a character.
Unfortunately, overall, movies are a conglomerate. People buy and sell people in this business, which can get really ugly.
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.
My mother opened a bank account for me when I made $60 on my first day of work as an extra. She's that kind of mother.
I was raised by an actress, and I watched all those women turn 60 and ask, Shouldn't get face work? My mother and Anne Bancroft said, We're not going to fall into that.
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.
Sometimes my family got me in the door. Somebody would say, 'Bruce Dern's daughter - sure I'd like to meet her.' It was a point of interest. But after five minutes of talking about my father, I still had to read for the part.
I'm lucky enough that directors sometimes seek me out for little projects that people don't even know about, that just surface later on.
The really courageous and bold thing is to make movies about human behaviour.
There's something so accessible about heroes who have faults.
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.
'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' is one of the greatest films of all time.
If we could all figure out a way to just be true to ourselves and have a good time doing what we're doing, it would be a lot more fun.
What I consider a good part for a woman and what some other Hollywood people think are good women's parts are very different. I don't want to play the supportive girlfriend who has nine scenes and just loves that man, maybe cheats on him in one scene but will always be there, and I mean - give me a break.
It would be great to make a movie that had the style of a great '30's film.
As an actor, you're not kind of thinking about your own work or watching the movie for the first time.
Jealousy is a scary thing.
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.
I was raised in the '70s, and I've worked with people I love, and I've been on sets with my parents, with people who run a set and require of actors a sense of liberty and freedom and exploration and failure into brave achievement.
It's one thing to have forced time off as an actor, and another thing when you actually say, 'I don't want to read anything, and I don't want to talk to anybody.'
Decision-making is very scary for me.
In American culture we are supposed to take a pill when we're depressed or in grief as opposed to actually feeling.
Starting my career as a kid, I was doing what jobs I got.
I got picked for very unique and independent filmmaking experiences with auteurs. And I'm so lucky.
I will be working with David Lynch when I'm 80.
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.
Having egregious divorces - where you just hate each other - is really the easy way out.
My dad taught me to never be pigeonholed; to really allow yourself to reinvent characters as they reinvent you; to be bold and to be willing to play seemingly unlikeable people.
I worked with HBO on 'Recount,' and we had a wonderful experience together. I'm such a fan of HBO and how much flexibility they give in character as well as schedule.
I'm moved by people who see the world differently than others. People who see the world with a longing for its poetry often can be broken people.
I always fall in love with qualities of people I work with.
I've seen 3-D movies where it seems a little crude or too in-your-face.
