I'm Not Like Puff Daddy, I Hold

The Discipline That Ballet Requires Is Obsessive. And Only The Ones Who Dedicate Their Whole Lives Are Able To Make It. Your Toenails Fall Off And You Peel Them Away And Then You're Asked To Dance Again And Keep Smiling. I Wanted To Become A Professional Ballet Dancer.

Pedro Almodóvar Asked Me To Watch Italian Films Again As Homework To Look At The Energy Of All Those Women From The Italian Neo-realist Films. A Lot Of Them Had Those Characters That Represented Motherhood. For Some Reason, In The '50s In Italy, The Mother Figure Was Very Important - And My Character Needed To Have That Energy.

[winning An Oscar] Was A Beautiful Thing That Happened. It Is In My House, And Every Time I Look At, I See All The People Who Are A Part Of It, All The People Who Gave Me Opportunities To Work, Gave Me Opportunities To Make A Living At This Thing [acting] That Was A Dream For Me, Growing Up. And I Got To Do It, And Then Again And Again And Again, And Make A Living Out Of Being An Actress.

Sometimes I Feel We Express More With Dancing Or Acting Or Painting Than With Words.

The Most Important Lesson I've Learned In This Business Is How To Say No. I Have Said No To A Lot Of Temptations, And I Am Glad I Did.