One nice thing about being a woman in Hollywood is that the women tend to be very close-knit. All of us writers and directors know each other and cling to each other for safety and support and it's really a completely different vibe than the men experience out here where they're all trying to murder each other.

I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.

I very rarely came across rude or disrespectful people. I don't know how I slipped by all of them but I honestly can't think of one experience off the top of my head that was like that. I'm sure they're there but I'd have to think really hard to recall them.

When I look back at the tapes your first everything your first All-Star Game your first playoff experience it just seems like it went by really fast.

I did a play called Throne of Straw when I was 11 at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It became really clear to me at that point that I enjoyed acting more than any other experience I was having.

I'm not trying to be romantic. I think you can tell when people are trying to be sexy onstage. When I was doing 'All the Way ' I was really thinking about my wife. People don't know my personal experience but they can tell it's an honest interpretation.

Well I think the main message is there is more to your story. There is more than what happens between the crib and the grave and that is what I am really trying to speak to this idea that all of life is this life and that there is nothing more than what we see and experience right here on this earth.

In my experience it is rarer to find a really happy person in a circle of millionaires than among vagabonds.

Sometimes I get so bold and I'm so confident about what I'm doing that I actually try to be more of a dork because it's a really liberating feeling to experience what it's like to not care.

I had no expectations about fatherhood really but it's definitely a journey I'm glad to be taking. Number one it's a great learning experience. When my mother told me it's a 24/7 job she wasn't kidding.

It's my experience that you really can't lose when you try the truth.

Motherhood has completely changed me. It's just about like the most completely humbling experience that I've ever had. I think that it puts you in your place because it really forces you to address the issues that you claim to believe in and if you can't stand up to those principles when you're raising a child forget it.

Parents of recovered children and I've met hundreds all share the same experience of doubters and deniers telling us our child must have never even had autism or that the recovery was simply nature's course. We all know better and frankly we're too busy helping other parents to really care.

Because our entire universe is made up of consciousness we never really experience the universe directly we just experience our consciousness of the universe our perception of it so right our only universe is perception.

I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I like to say it's like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. And it really is that harmful to us to live this way.

The essence of life is finding something you really love and then making the daily experience worthwhile.

One of the greatest moments in anybody's developing experience is when he no longer tries to hide from himself but determines to get acquainted with himself as he really is.

Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience.

When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.

A woman's life can really be a succession of lives each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge and each marked off by some intense experience.

As an actor you just want to work and then you just want to be on a show or have a job that you love and you hope that job will last - those things have happened. To have that platform to then talk about something that is very personal to me like marriage equality it feels like a gift. I try and really respect that voice and not abuse it.

Do people really want liberty equality fraternity? Is it not some manner of speaking?

Elections are also about the future - the pledges that we are making for this country. For those who care about equality and fairness in the UK and beyond Labour really is the only choice.

Feminism is just about equality really and there's so much stuff attached to the word when it's actually so simple. I don't know why it's always so bogged down.