Everybody reads for me. I was never weird about that. I never minded coming in and reading. They should know if I'm the right person, and I should know if I want to do a movie.

Knowing what paint a painter uses or having an understanding of where he was in the history of where he came from doesn't hurt your appreciation of the painting.

My earliest memories are doing commercials and TV.

I don't direct so that I can have an identity and so I can go on to CGI movies. I had a big identity as an actor, and that's not what I'm looking for from directing. Directing is a whole different goal.

If I refused to get married, my parents would be brokenhearted and confused. Like any child close to her parents, I could not watch them suffer.

Here in New Orleans, what a lot of the musical families do - and this is a romantic concept on my part - is they teach their kids to tap dance first. Then after tap dance, you learn piano, and after piano, you get to pick between all the instruments that are out there.

Commerce seems to be covering every aspect of our lives now. Which me, because I'm a romantic, is sad for me to say.

I dated a guy and he liked me but I didn't like him. I went through his wardrobe and cleaned out his house and got him to get a new car. He said to me, 'If I give you $10,000, will you find me my wife because I want someone like you?' And within a year, he got married. That was the first match that led to me leaving my corporate job.