To me, all writing is like music. And especially dialogue. I studied music in college; that is what I wanted to be, a composer. Acting got me sidetracked.
He didn't maintain my illusion of myself, he gave me an illusion of myself. Before I met him, I never thought of myself as an actress. Boy, he sidetracked me in a great way!
It was precisely my love of the First Amendment that made me join sidewalk activists in 2010 to support an Islamic community center's right to open in Lower Manhattan.
We're all in this together. I learned that lesson growing up in West Philly. When I shoveled the sidewalk my parents didn't let me stop with our house. They told me to keep shoveling all the way to the corner. I had a responsibility to my community.
Most of the time it's the parents who recognise me. They try to tell their kids, 'Look, it's Giselle,' and I say, 'No, no, no, don't ruin this for them,' because I'm usually standing there with my hair sideways and no make-up on. And the kid is saying, 'That is not Giselle. No way. That is some worn-out girl who really needs a bath.'
My father died in 1989 before I knew what I was going to do with my life. I had just graduated from college. My mother died just before 'Sideways' came out. She knew I was an actor, but she never saw me become successful.
A lot of films made me love the movies, everything from Hitchcock to Godard. But the ones that really grabbed me were Costa-Gavras's films like 'Z' and 'State of Siege.'
I received so many hate letters when I breast-fed a starving baby in Africa. I was in Sierra Leone in 2009 and I was weaning my child at that time - she was not there with me. There was a hungry baby who was crying because his mother had no milk, and I thought, 'Why throw away my milk if I can give it to a baby who needs it?'
With 'Sierra,' this mean girl had all these kids bullying me - and I wrote the first verse and chorus the night before Tae and I came to Nashville.
I'll get boxes full of books and objects from perfect strangers in the oddest places. Teachers will send me students' drawings, etc. It's hard to sift through it all.
Failure has never been a signal for me to quit; it's always been a sign for me to go down another path.
I have a great body, I really do. But I want to be taken seriously as an artist, and wearing anything that shows it off will be a distraction from the music. That's how my signature uniform, my tuxedo, came about. It's classic and timeless. You'll see me in black, white, and a pop of color on my lips. That pop adds a little magic.
I don't think I need a significant other to be happy because I always like to find that for myself, but I think that it makes me a lot happier when I'm sharing my life with somebody.
I think we all depend on a significant other, and we think if they leave me, I'll die. But that's not true. We're all much stronger than we think we are.
Signing with Sony/ATV was life changing for me.
I've had many a player tell me all through high school and right up until signing day that they were coming to Alabama, then they signed with somebody else.
I'm out there arguing the Labor case. I will do it anywhere and everywhere that I can. I do it within various communities across Australia where I am able to make a positive contribution. And let me tell you, my voice won't be silenced in the public debate because the issue at stake for Australia are so stark.
Katrina silenced me for two years. I wrote a 12-page essay on my experience in Katrina, and that's it. I didn't write anything for, like, two, two and a half years after Katrina hit because it was so traumatic.
What my research has shown me is that experts tend on the whole to form very rigid camps; that within these camps, a dominant perspective emerges that often silences opposition; that experts move with the prevailing winds, often hero-worshipping their own gurus.
To me, meditation is simply silencing or focusing the mind.
