It's cool to be a female character who gets to be really strong and tough.

Im a combination between extreme insecurity and extreme confidence.

Going to the darkest place you can to make yourself really upset and adding that with the physicality and running around, you can work yourself into hysteria that way.

I love stories about people that, whatever situation they're in, you can relate to them in a way.

When I was little, I thought about becoming a lawyer like my parents, and my mother would always tell me, "You can do anything you want - except be a lawyer."

I try to write my own music. It's a good way of de-stressing.

Acting is a really strange thing. You have to know when you're put in a bad situation, but you also have to be willing to do something very strange.

I'm really easily affected by horror films. I have pretty strong reactions to them.

I'm a huge fan of Steve Martin. He's hilarious, but he has this depth to him and this way of dealing with the difficult things in life with a sense of humor that I think has helped me as an actress.

I use a lot of sense memory and, well, I can't really avoid getting into character.

I went to an all-girls school for part of high school, and the idea of boys was amazing to me, like, all I ever wanted to do was kiss boys and be around boys.

Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy.

Me being a black girl in London, whose mom is first-generation African and whose dad is West Indian, gives me a different view. I'm coming at soul from my own place.

Lose no time; be always employed in something useful.

It's our insides that make us who we are, that allow us to dream and wonder and feel for others. That's what's essential. That's what will always make the biggest difference in our world.

I'm like Robin Hood. I rob the rich to make these projects come alive... not really rob. It's done with a smile.

From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.

But respect yourself most of all.

You start at the stupid end of the book, and if you're lucky you finish at the smart end.

George [Clooney] and I do have the aim one day to be in a film where we say one nice thing to each other. Hopefully one day.

Just as our taste in lovers is far more revealing than our choice of friends, the object of an artist's obsession can open up doors to their soul that might otherwise remain shut tight.