For me, being Catholic was who I was and who I am, just like I'm Irish and Slovak. It's just so ingrained in us.
Why hast thou made me born in this country, The inhabitant of which is satisfied with being a slave?
I wanted to have a personal life that I fully inhabited, not because I am such a great mom, but for me.
Privacy is important to me. But it's not just about sticking two fingers up and saying I don't want anyone to know my business. It's an artistic choice. I think that for any actor to convince their audience that they have completely inhabited a character requires a certain level of anonymity.
For me, I try to see difficulties as a way of expanding and growing as a person inhabiting this planet.
I practice yoga at home to a TV show called 'Inhale,' taught by Steve Ross. I figured that if the people on the show could stretch that deep then I could too. I ended up pulling my hip flexor. But that's how I met my husband. Paul was the physical therapist my coach called to meet with me after hours.
The difference with me is that I did inhale.
People credit me for making the universe interesting when in fact the universe is inherently interesting, and I'm merely revealing that fact. I don't think I'm anything special for this to happen.
My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories - not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father's generation. It's a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.
I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets.
While I love to read contemporary fiction, I'm not drawn to writing it. Perhaps it's because the former journalist in me is too inhibited by the press of reality; when I think about writing of my own time I always think about nonfiction narratives. Or perhaps it's just that I find the present too confounding.
I can not stay at the place when a stranger starts talking to me. I will try to cut the speech as quick as possible and move away. I had to break this inhibition before becoming an actor.
Shooting on the iPhone has become more of a directors' tool to lower inhibition of first-time actors and nonprofessionals. While it's helped me become more mobile, no pun intended - running around, finding tight areas and different ways of moving the camera - to me it's more about using this device to catch candid moments. That's the biggest thing.
'Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa' has helped me shed my inhibitions. Dancing in front of an audience was not easy for me. But I managed it and got progressively comfortable with the audience as the weeks progressed.
I made, over the years in Cambridge, several very good American friends, and America appeared to me, a land of promise in every sense of that word, a land of freedom from the inhibitions and restrictions that I felt in England.
You're going to tell me that things aren't right in Cuba, and so we shouldn't engage. It's lunacy. Look outside your door and see the inhumanity of Americans... that we perpetrate on a daily basis in our lives... and then tell me that you're going to isolate Cuba as an example. I'm sorry; that's unacceptable.
I really wanted it to be organic and coming from my heart. So, I think maybe the initial thought of wanting to go in that direction, I had to wait until things happened in our world and in our country that fired me up enough where the words came out organically.
Be passionate and bold. Always keep learning. You stop doing useful things if you don't learn. So the last part to me is the key, especially if you have had some initial success. It becomes even more critical that you have the learning 'bit' always switched on.
I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon's urgings for me to go there.
I'm trying to open up my range and really sing more. With The Fugees initially, and even with 'Miseducation,' it was very hip-hop - always a singing over beats. I don't think people have really heard me sing out. So if I do record again, perhaps it will have an expanded context. Where people can hear a bit more.
