On her stay at a co-dependency treatment center last year in Texas to sort out issues of anxiety and depression:

“I wanted to clean out the wreckage of my past. It used to be that every time I made a movie, I had to deal with gut-wrenching anxiety. Now I feel that I have the tools to be creative and nurture myself at the same time.”

On her international charity work ranging from family planning to AIDS and malaria prevention:

“Service work is my highest purpose. When I travel, I get to see poverty reduction strategies in action. I am particularly committed to the empowerment of girls and women, but my experience has shown that problems don’t exist in isolation. Gender inequality is linked to poverty, which is in turn linked to lack of education, lack of infrastructure, and so on.”

“It’s so fortunate that people are interested in my movies, but when I talk to someone, all I want to do is discuss social justice and changing the world.”

On her new, very unglamorous role in Bug:

“When I’m considering a part, a key factor is spending as little time as possible in hair and makeup, and I certainly didn’t need much of that for this movie.” (laughed) “Lately I’m very picky when it comes to movies. I don’t do as many as I used to since I married my husband [racecar driver Dario Franchitti] five years ago. Bug was a truly out-there experience. The script put me in a ‘bet-you-can’t-do-this’ situation, so I wanted to prove that I could. I like projects that provoke me as an artist.”

On future roles:

“I’d love to do a mountain movie, something specifically Appalachian. Or a good justice story, or something with animals…you know, just the stuff I really like.”

Source: C Magazine