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All of my characters are a little bit based on people I know in real life. You know when you do that you have to change the character a little bit in case your friend or your relative reads the book, because you don't want them to know you wrote about them... They might get mad.

I don't want to know about the lives of other actors and I don't want people to know too much about me. If we don't know about the private lives of other actors, that leaves us as clean slates when it comes to playing characters. That's the point, they can create these other characters and I can believe them.

Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.

I'd like to be known for my character.

I've found in the past that the more closely I identify with the heroine, the less completely she emerges as a person. So from the first novel I've been learning techniques to distance myself from the characters so that they are not me and I don't try to protect them in ways that aren't good for the story.

I don't want to be known for anything other than the fact that I play characters in movies.

I want to be known for this character on TV two nights a week, and then I want to go away and live my life in private.

I like to hide behind the characters I play. Despite the public perception, I am a very private person who has a hard time with the fame thing.

I always want the audience to identify with my character in some way. I mean, sometimes you'll get characters that aren't very identifiable. Sometimes you can't relate to your character at all. I think it's important to keep the audience interested. But the best advice that I've gotten is to live in the moment.

I treat all my characters as if they were real, and I am scrupulous about the details of their lives.