I've been embracing aging. I always have, since I was a kid. When you're the kid on the set for so long, you just, like, daydream about being older.
If I showed you scripts from my first few movies, the descriptions of my characters all said 'the ugly girl'.
I'm not someone like Norma Desmond who's harking back to her younger days.
Break-ups are hard for anybody, but it's particularly tough when it's being documented and you see the person's picture everywhere. Most people don't have that added problem when they break up with someone.
With 'Ed Wood,' I sobbed. With 'Frankenweenie,' I was crying. With 'Edward Scissorhands,' I always cry. There's always an incredible amount of purity, even if they look a certain way.
As a teenager, I worked on Indian reservations, and it was such an incredible culture: the elders are so respected.
It's great concentrating so hard you feel your brain will explode.
I approached work very seriously. I never went out. I couldn't fathom people who could go out to clubs... I mean, if I had a 6 A.M. call, I had to be prepared. I had to be in bed at a certain hour.
You try to get out there and live. I've always had good friends who've been very supportive and help make me feel good and grounded because I've never felt attached to the film industry.
I wanted to be just a normal girl flirting with a normal guy. It's like, you meet people, and they know this stuff about you. It's why you want to meet somebody who's in the same business, only because they understand more. But you don't necessarily want to be with another actor.
It's all about knowing when to listen to that conversation and - without sounding really hokey - when to tune it out and follow your heart.
There was a time when I was 19 when I really, really, really thought I was going crazy. I was exhausted and going through a terrible depression.
It's also a question of finding good material and interesting roles. I'm not the only actress out there, and good parts just don't fall into your lap that easily. But I like most of the films I've made recently and so I'm pretty positive about the future.
Life's short, so if you're going to spend months doing something, it's gotta be pretty special... But I'm very happy to enter my Baby Jane years, and hopefully segue into the Ruth Gordon years.
But I've always felt a need to have a life which is completely separate - at least as far as possible - from the kind of illusory lifestyle that comes with being a celebrity.
I don't believe I am influencing anybody but myself.
I would not want to go back to playing the ingenue.
Part of me feels like when you had a lot of success in your teens and 20s, it gets harder for you in your 30s because people are so attached to you as this ingenue. So even though you're older, they still think of you as that girl - that waifish young girl. And so it was sort of like a struggle.
I was regarded as the school freak which further reinforced a lot of inhibitions and doubts I had about myself. I was a shy, frightened teenager for a long time.
Scorsese would talk to me about this movie 'The Heiress' with Olivia de Havilland. We were talking about this scene in it, and suddenly we were rolling. It was very intentional, and I didn't realize - because we talk old movies all the time.