With all of the people in Cuba who I met - many of them hugely heroic figures - I found learning about their complexity and richness and contradictions just really fascinating, and it was fulfilling to be able to offer a different side to them, to be able to have some kind of unique takeaway from the official narrative.

Hundreds of years ago, the most beautiful women of Havana were only glimpsed stepping in or out of carriages on this street. The first foreign writers who arrived and saw this could never get past just how incredibly beautiful their feet were.

Is Duran's 'No Mas' a more defining moment in his career than his victory over Sugar Ray Leonard in their first fight? For many, it is.

We're a long way away from someone like Willie Pep winning a round without throwing a punch.

I was just trying out and having some fun. I don't think I'd want to pursue singing as a career; it's an on-the-side thing. It would be great if I could make a career out of it but if I can't, that's OK too.

As an author, you spend a lot of time by yourself in a room making clicky noises. It gets pretty insulated. You realize pretty early on in your career that even if this goes well, you could spend all your life in a room alone. Unless you pick projects that are going to get you out doing things, you're not going to actually live your life.

If you build a career on being a beautiful young woman, that's going to be a short career. I have to establish I can act. I don't want to have to visit the plastic surgeon every two years.

There's no way that anyone can know the ebb and flow of one's career. You can't know that. You can tell young actors it's going to be very difficult, but there's no way you can understand the difficulties and the rewards through description. You have to cellularly experience it.