Laura Dern
'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' is one of the greatest films of all time.Collection: Movies
Jealousy is a scary thing.Collection: Jealousy
When man decides he can control nature, he's in deep trouble.Collection: Nature
Growth doesn't hurt. This is what I've learned. In the end, it doesn't hurt. It hurts while it's happening. But in the end, you know, for life, for parenting, and for the arts, it's not a bad - not a bad thing to try for.Collection: Parenting
People now tell me it's a good thing I stayed away from teen films. Well, it wasn't my choice. I wasn't hired.Collection: Teen
Diet is weird. It's elusive. I just try to listen to my body.Collection: Diet
For me, the greatest good fortune I have being raised by actors is I came in knowing that a career is the ebb and flow.
We like our archetypes and heroes to be what they are at face value. And life doesn't work out like that.
I certainly wouldn't mind if 'Jurassic Park' turns out to be commercially successful, and somebody says, 'Hey, you were in a box-office hit, and if you want to do another movie, we'll give you five million dollars to make it.'
Having egregious divorces - where you just hate each other - is really the easy way out.
Any journey of a creative person has, you know, really unusual challenges and years where you don't work and years where you work.
Whatever character you play, it gives you the chance to expose another side of yourself that maybe you've never felt comfortable with, or never knew about.
To stay true to your art is such a complicated journey, and Dad clearly has done it.
I love Clint Eastwood, and I wish to work with him again. He's completely irreverent about everything, including his own beautiful work.
The bad news is, I have worked less than I have liked. The good news is, I can look back on my body of work and feel truly proud of the work I have done.
I wanted to go to Jupiter. That was my plan from day one, and David Lynch gave me the ticket.
I will be working with David Lynch when I'm 80.
Ben Stiller, who I love and who is a friend and is such an incredible actor - he's hilarious, obviously, but I thought his performance in 'Greenberg' was extraordinary.
I don't turn my nose up at anything. If it's a great part, it's a great part. I'd love to do a box-office hit.
I hope we can be consummate artists as women or revolutionaries, or whatever women want to be, and also have love, not only for ourselves but from a partner.
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.
I like movies about longing and desperation, and dark and light things, stories about people struggling to raise children, and to have relationships and be intimate with each other.
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.
I really don't consider myself to be a conventional Hollywood star. I've never really been marketed by the big studios to do mass market box office films.
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'm interested in flawed protagonists. I was raised on them.
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.
I've always loved film more than theater.
It would be great to make a movie that had the style of a great '30's film.
It's a strange world, as David Lynch would say.
It's always been a desire of mine to work with my parents.
Luckily, I was raised by people who'd already seen all the yuck stuff, which is why they originally didn't want me to act. I understood the difference between getting a part at a Hollywood party and getting a job.
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.
That's life - to turn each other on, to feel good, to feel in love.
The really courageous and bold thing is to make movies about human behaviour.
There's always a side of a woman that likes a man from the other side of the tracks.
There's something so accessible about heroes who have faults.
Unfortunately, overall, movies are a conglomerate. People buy and sell people in this business, which can get really ugly.
What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?
Wild at Heart made a few people angry-they thought I was exploiting women by showing that when a woman says no she really means yes.
It's really fun to act like a bimbo. But it's fun to act like a bimbo only when people know that you really aren't one.
There are a lot more female writers wanting to direct their own material and hopefully will be given the opportunity.
I knew I wanted to become an actor when I was 7 years old. My dad was working with Alfred Hitchcock, my mom was working with Martin Scorsese - and it was the great summer of my childhood.
It's my deepest interest as an actor: I love discovering how human beings work, how their flaws reveal themselves - how to learn and grow from that - and how characters teach me things as a woman and as a parent.
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 love being in my 40s.
I tend to always love material with flawed protagonists and morally ambiguous people.
I've got the sort of personality that requires me to find some sort of release, and for me, it's performing.
A lot of people have asked whether acting is in my genes. I don't know if anyone is born to act. And it certainly wasn't pushed on me. It was something I wanted to do.
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.