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People who think that Sylvia Plath was a poor, sensitive poet are not getting that she had great amounts of ambition and anger that moved her along, or she wouldn't have been able to fight against that depression to produce such an incredible body of work by the age of thirty.

It was a wonderful experience to work with Sylvia. She pushed me to be more powerful with my acting, and she told me scores of the most incredible stories I've ever heard. She is amazing.

I had a friend, Melissa, who was 28 years old. She was my best friend's wife, and she was my wife's best friend. She died of breast cancer. When she passed away back in 2004 was the last time I cried.

I was having such a hard time when I made Sylvia. I gave everything I had for that role. It's one or two or three things I'm most proud of in terms of my work. But it was very dark.

I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence.

I was darkly convinced that at age 52 I would kill myself because my mother committed suicide at that age. I was fantasizing that she was waiting for me on the other side of the grave.

I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris. It was rainy. It was all wrong. And I was thinking, 'God, she loved life so much.'

My mom died of cancer when I was really young. I'm not someone who tries to work out their own stuff with a role, but I think that happened despite my best efforts to keep myself separate from it.

My mother is a survivor who's had a lot of things happen in her life that have been very trying.