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 love what I do, and I love doing it, and I love getting better at it. I just am not willing to risk... Much... to go on to the next level. I don't want to risk my personal sanity or happiness or my family or the love of my life.

It's not precisely that I'm not ambitious. I love what I do, and I love doing it, and I love getting better at it. I just am not willing to risk... much... to go on to the next level.

Movies and I just equally avoided each other at certain times in my life, you know?

What I remember as a child is that other kids didn't care about suffering. I always did.

The original Alexandre Dumas was born in 1762, the son of 'Antoine Alexandre de l'Isle,' in the French sugar colony of Saint-Domingue. Antoine was a nobleman in hiding from his family and from the law, and he fathered the boy with a black slave.

Being a slave meant never having the stability of knowing your family would be together as many years as God designed it to be. It meant you could come back from picking cotton in a field to find that your children are gone, your husband's gone, your mother's gone.

I grew up with singers. My father's mother sang opera. My dad was a big band singer. I can't remember a time there wasn't music in the house, so I grew up listening to great songwriters - George Gershwin, Cole Porter - and my grandma was playing opera for me before I was 3.