I decided at age 9 but I was reinforced at age 13 when a teacher told me I had talent. I can't say she really motivated me because I already knew. I knew I had talent. I went to the Jewish community theater and got in plays there. Then I went for the movies.'

If you put down a list of jobs doctor lawyer janitor teacher or movie star everybody would pick the movie star. And why? So you could lie around the pool drink margaritas and send money to your parents. So that's what I did.

You know how to tell if the teacher is hung over? Movie Day.

For the past few years I was the more visible Asian performer and I think it gave young girls a kind of role model showing it's possible to actually reach success doing movies.

I had come to the point when I realized it was unlikely that my film career was going to move beyond a certain level of role. And I was - because I had graphic instances of it - handicapped by the success of Star Trek. A director would say 'I don't want Jean-Luc Picard in my movie' - and this was compounded by X-Men as well.

This weird thing happens when you're in a movie that has some level of success. People start offering you all kinds of things and they just expect you to do them because they'll be good for your career. It's not about the project's integrity or anything like that.

Movies TV sports come and go but what you stand for is what people remember. Mandela Martin Luther King John Kennedy are people who really stood for something and were willing to die for it. You don't see a whole lot of that any more.

The thing about sports movies is they can't help but feel epic - putting music to images etc.

I love sports as all Bostonians seem to. I love books and movies as all writers seem to.

I think everybody has something that takes them away or makes them happier. To some people it's baseball or sports or knitting or the movies.

I just think that sports movies have such a built-in visceral rooting interest an epic win or lose redemptive quality. When they get it right it can make for a really rousing movie experience.

The 'Sports Illustrated' cover was the last thing I shot. That week I told my agent 'You know what I really... I don't want to be a model anymore. I really want to do movies.' And I think he wanted to wring my neck at the moment.

I tried to get a baseball movie made a couple of years ago and I don't think it didn't happen because I was a woman but because sports movie don't sell internationally.

I would like to do a sports movie.

I think a big part of our attraction to sport movies are the stories contained within the sports.

My favorite sports movies I like 'Remember the Titans' and 'Hoosiers' Jimmy Chitwood from the corner.

I love sports and I love sports movies.

When a sports movie really works it gets you on all levels because the stakes are high. It's black and white. It's win or lose.

I have to admit that when I watch a movie in which there is no moral context for the violence - I find that offensive. I think that's potentially damaging to society.

And I like the look on people's faces when I say I'm doing this movie called Pride and Prejudice and they kind of smile and then I say I'm in a movie called Doom and they kind of do a double take and try and put the two things together. And they never quite manage to.

I do love science fiction but it's not really a genre unto itself it always seems to merge with another genre. With the few movies I've done I've ended up playing with genre in some way or another so any genre that's made to mix with others is like candy to me. It allows you to use big mythic situations to talk about ordinary things.

If you publish a scientific paper it is very hard to start a nationwide debate about something. If you do this in a movie you can start a debate. We like to create a bridge between those two worlds - film and science.

When I was a kid I loved 'The Curse of Frankenstein ' 'The Creeping Unknown ' 'X: The Unknown.' I love 'Forbidden Planet ' 'The Thing from Another World.' They were science fiction/horror movies generally.

I was born in 1950 and watched science fiction and horror movies on TV and was always really fascinated by them.