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I always remember responding very emotionally to film. I had a lot of lonely time on my hands because I wasn't really the best-looking kid in my town and I sort of pined after girls. I had to sort of immerse myself in the arts because girls weren't particularly interested in me.

You know how there's always the one girl in drama school who can cry at the drop of a hat? She has that emotional well she can tap into in a second? I'm not that girl. It takes a lot to get me to that place.

I'm an incredibly emotional person, but I always feel bad about that. The work is therapy... I need to emote wildly while I write. I weep. I'll laugh, get excited, and get up and pace. I try to take the emotional journey with the characters.

I've always been very open with my emotions. Actually, that's got me into a lot of trouble, too, in the past.

Acting has always been a way for me to express the emotions I had buried. If I hadn't acted, I would have gone insane. In my acting class, I could let out my real tears and everyone thought it was the character. But no, it was me.

I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood and was raised by a man who did not emote, ever... I always cry at movies, and when I was a kid, I would try to hide it. It wasn't something a kid in Oaklyn, N.J., did. So I have these weird hang-ups about emotions.

Long scenes of emotion are quite difficult - you've got to build up to them and make sure you're in the right emotional space.

As an actress, emotions are my business, my stock-in-trade. As such, I've dealt with them nearly all my life.

It's not that I am not emotional, but I am extremely secure and curb it, as I am afraid to let go and be broken. So, I have cultivated myself to be detached in life, specially where movies are concerned.

For a long time I thought I could deal with my anger and hostility on my own. But I couldn't. I denied that it had affected me, and yet I was so frantic on the inside with other people: I needed to be constantly reassured.