Music & Film

If I die unexpectedly, can everyone just do the right thing and pretend I was a way better person than I am?

I work very physically as an actor. The biggest thing for me has been the challenge of how to be this person with the personal transformation that's going on for me physically... That hasn't been easy. It's been an awesome challenge for me… because so much of how I access character is through my body.

L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling was recorded on tape making racist comments. He now has been banned from the league for life. Great, just where Sterling wanted to end up – the blacklist.

...I tried to kill myself. It was a feeble attempt, but I did. And I got put in a mental hospital for a month, and I got myself straight and worked on my mental health…it's nothing that I hide. It's nothing to be proud of or to be ashamed of. It's part of my life, you know? And I'm still here!

I would love to play Nefertiti or Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba. We preserve more male history than we do female. We have to preserve [female history]. No more complaining. We have to do it.

I don't think that it's healthy for young girls to be looking at these beauty magazines and watching TV and these shows and thinking [that's the standard]...you look at French film, Spanish film - they're a little more open to quirks and human nature - that we're not all symmetrical, not all the same shape...we need more of that.

In my 20s, I used to cry about why I wasn't thinner or prettier - but I want to add that I also used to cry about things like: 'I wish my hair would grow faster. I wish I had different shoes’…I was an idiot...It's a decade of tears.

Now, there are roles which are capturing a vibrant moment in an older woman’s life. There was a time when those interesting roles stopped at 28. A few years ago we would have been finished by our age.

When you are giving a certain portion of your life to people and you’re selling it sexually, you’re selling it sensually, and you’re selling it romantically - for you to then take that portion that you give only to fans away and to give it to one person, it kind of… if they don’t approve, it might be crickets for me.

I think it’s about time a 55-year-old British woman is the heroine of an action movie. I may have to write it.

It's about finding what's next. I'm hesitant to let people know what producers I'm f---ing with, what I'm rapping about. I'd rather drop that winning hand out of nowhere.

I've been doing this professionally since I was 10. If entertainment years were dog years, man, I'd be like Gandhi. I'd be like 250 years old.