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For me, actresses are constantly chameleons, and so they are taking a backseat to their own personality. I don't feel like we're trying to show off their personality as much as let them be a blank slate. It's precisely the reason why I dress more musicians than I do actresses.

Pristine vulnerability is just so boring to me. The performances that I love are ones like Gena Rowland's in 'A Woman Under the Influence,' where women are allowed to be messy and imperfect. It's that kind of woman that has always inspired me to seek roles that are a little out of the box. I just haven't always had the opportunity to do them.

I think a lot of actors need validation. If you see truly amazing actors perform, they expose themselves to such an incredible degree. You can really see their pain.

And I think that, of course, there is some dysfunction of needing to be liked or noticed or to feel part of things, something going on there for most actors. For some there's not and I think they really struggle with it.

I've been in showbusiness all my life, but as an actress I have never been overly driven.

To see talented people in roles that others might not see them in, to see how they might fit in the puzzle of the cast, has always been something that I've been good at. I think that if you look at the successes of my films and start to peel them back, there's usually a really smart casting decision that has gone into that success.

I guess I don't have the cut-throat ambition that some other actresses have. I don't know how good that is for my career, but I know how good that is for me as a person. And to me, that's much more important.

I think being an actress is more how to cope with the fact that you can't do anything else than to express a talent. It's a way of being untalented for anything.

For the actors, the talent is to serve the demands that I ask of them, to do it with naturality and truth, and to be honest when we were terrified.