Quotes

I look my best after an entire hair and makeup team has spent hours perfecting me. When do I feel my best? When I haven't looked in a mirror for days, and I'm doing things that make me happy.

Kindness is really important to me in finding my own prince - so are patience and a sense of humor. Without those qualities he's no Prince Charming!

[on avoiding the hard partying young-star life style] I really don't drink, I don't do drugs. I feel like right now I've been given so many opportunities I don't want to mess it up with those things ... I think I was raised in a solidly upper-middle class family who had really strong values and excess was not one of the things that my family put up with.

[on working with Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada (2006)] She is just divine. As a human being, she has basically accomplished everything that I want to do ... It's not that she just gets inside the character, she's just absolutely at the center of all of her choices, of the truth of the character.

[on her character "Lureen" in Brokeback Mountain (2005)] She can act sweet, but she's fundamentally a predator.

In Hollywood you have to be careful if you go above a six, then you're considered fat. I'm considered to be, I hope, an actress, and you can get away with a couple of extra pounds if you are trading on your talent instead of your sex appeal. I don't have time to be tortured about my weight.

Over the last few years I've learned that the Next Big Thing is something a lot of people wish and want for you - but what you wish for yourself is really important too.

[on the importance of a college education] College is such a unique time because you're learning a little bit how to be an adult. You're learning how to take care of yourself without parental influence, and you're exposed to so many great minds. I feel like I didn't even know how to think until I got to college.

I've worked with people and I've known people that were really competitive but I've always said that I take an Elizabeth Bennett philosophy of life - I laugh. I love my job but if it means hurting someone I won't do it.

[on Brokeback Mountain (2005)] I'm more proud of that film than anything I have created.

I got into this business to be an actress, to scare myself and force myself into a place outside of my comfort zone. I have nothing against The Princess Diaries (2001) - but it has been a brick wall at times for my career.

I disagree with a couple of the stances of the Catholic Church. My older brother is gay and it's important for me to be able to love him completely and freely and it's important for me to spread beliefs in the world that are not going to limit people in their love.I can't support a religion that doesn't support my brother.

Films are letting me get older, which is really nice, because there was always this fear of what happens when I stop being a teenager. But for everyone else, it was kind of a sharp left.

I think that fashion can be a lot of fun. I love clothes, but I recognize that it should only be a hobby. Some clothes that are more design-based look better on women with figures like wire hangers, because that's the nature of the design. I won't wear those clothes.

I'll be honest with you, it really, really, really annoys me, the image that's put out there for women. These tiny, tiny bodies, with absolutely no fat at all on them. It's unhealthy, plain and simple, and there are only a handful of women in the world who are naturally like that. It makes me sick.

I'm very choosy! It drives my agent nuts.

[her views on role models] ... it's not something that I have ever aspired to be or courted because I think the second that you say, "Oh, I am a role model and that's why I make the decisions that I make," you've kind of shot yourself in the foot. A role model is somebody that does things because of what they believe in regardless of what other people think.

I cry terribly easily. Just a minute ago, I was reading an article about Kate Winslet in Vogue, and I love her so much, I started crying, realizing how great she is and how far I have to go.

I've had directors say to me, 'You're the best actress for the role, but you've put on weight recently.' If people can't understand you've put on five pounds, I don't want to deal with them.

Obsessing about weight is a big old waste of time.

I love working and I feel satisfied when I know I have literally given all the energy that I have. That being said, work is not my No. 1 priority. I don't think it can come at the expense of your family, your friends and your 'significant other' if you have one.

I'm very aware of my own background. I'm Irish, French and then a little bit of everything else thrown in, ranging from German to Native American. We're talking about tiny drops of blood.

I spent a lot of time in the early part of my career staying within the same realm with a lot of my film choices. I don't regret that, considering that my first movie was ... a very popular film. So, all of a sudden, I had opportunities, I had attention, I had buzz and heat and all those things that people tell you you are supposed to work for and I didn't know if I could act.

[on performing love scenes with Steve Carell in Get Smart (2008)] Making out with him is like the yummiest lollipop. Dipped in sunshine. And wrapped around in a masculine wrapper.

[on the death of her Brokeback Mountain (2005) co-star Heath Ledger] That was tough. I hesitate to talk about Heath. He was special in so many ways. I can tell you that I feel I cared about him more than I actually knew him. It was devastating, and the people who were closest to him should talk about him in their own time.

[on dating actors] I try not to date where I work. It makes life easier.I don't say no to anybody because I'd hope that people wouldn't say no to me just because I'm an actor - but they'd have to be pretty extraordinary.

[about Meryl Streep who was in her category in Critics' Choice Awards 2009] I'm not going to win. I'm in a dramatic category with Meryl Streep. No contest.

I gave up my struggle with perfection a long time ago. That is a concept I don't find very interesting anymore. Everyone just wants to look good in the photographs. I think that is where some of the pressure comes from. Be happy. Be yourself, the day is about a lot more. If designers want to dress me then I am at the larger end of the Hollywood scale so they have to be fine with that. And I think what some designers do is if a dress doesn't fit you because it's been fitted to a size zero model they will remake the dress for you.

[on Love & Other Drugs (2010)] On the day I shot the scene where I have to remove my trench coat and be nude underneath, I thought we were filming, but it turned out we were just rehearsing and I got unnecessarily naked in front of a lot of people. But hey, I just did my job.

I think we are moving away from the idea there is one way to look. Oddly enough, the TV show Mad Men (2007) has done a huge and wonderful thing for women's bodies by showing what women used to naturally look like. We kind of forgot because women have been encouraged to manipulate their bodies for so many years to look like one ideal.

When my brother came out, we all felt like 'we love you and so what' - he was still Mike. It has since become a much bigger issue for us because when Mike wanted to marry his partner, he could only do it in Canada. Whatever your feelings about gay marriage, you have to accept that to ban it is discrimination, it's a human rights issue. No one can tell my brother he can't do anything and I will fight to my last breath to make sure he gets the same rights as me.

[on Love & Other Drugs (2010)] It was definitely out of my comfort zone and it required an extra little dose of courage every day. But I don't think there's anything wrong with nudity in films. I would go into my trailer and a make-up artist would put body make-up on me and then I would compulsively do sit-ups and push-ups until they needed me on set. But then we would do the sex scenes and afterwards we would just be Jake (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Annie chilling out. It was very innocent.

Ireland is such an amazing country, and I have this little dream in the back of my head that someday I'll end up living there. When I've established myself in America and I don't need to live near the action, so to speak, and if you're good, the work will come to you. I feel very Irish; maybe that's why I've been so lucky with my career. On my father's side, we have relatives all over Cork and Donegal.

[about how she chose to sing "I Dreamed a Dream" in Les Misérables (2012)] There seemed to be something selfish about trying to go for "the pretty version". She's devastated, she's literally at the bottom of a hole, looking up and realizing she's never going to climb out of this. So I just decided to apply the truth to the melody and then see what would happen.

Fantine is not just a character that lived centuries ago. Women are having sexual experiences for less than a dollar a day so their children can eat. There's someone like her a block from us right now. And that should be to our collective, mutual outrage and shame.

My feeling about growing up in New Jersey was, "How come I'm not in New York?"

I think that when actors are living very public lives, it affects your ability to get lost in their performances.

My favorite fashion is daring. I love it as an art form. I love it when people are able to interpret thoughts and feelings on fabric.

[on the forty-pound spacesuit she wears in Interstellar (2014)] The first time I put it on, I made up my mind that it's the favourite costume I've ever worn. It was the closest I ever felt to feeling like a kid at Hallowe'en, if you can stretch Hallowe'en out for several months.

[on Matthew McConaughey] Matthew is a top-quality human being - exactly who you'd want to be lost in space with. He is as down to duke it out in a tough scene as he is to mix the margaritas for the after-party. And you know, he is going to do both brilliantly.

[on Johnny Depp] -- I have a couple scenes with Johnny Depp. I wish I could be so cool about it and say, like, "Oh yeah, it's just Johnny." But I am such a huge fan. I felt really embarrassed. He would catch me staring at him and I would have to look up, but we were shooting on green screens so there was nothing to look at. I'd be like, "Oh, look a bit more green wall. Did you notice that? No? Good."

[after Emily Blunt called her performance cheap on an episode of Lip Sync Battle (2015)] To be fair, Emily knows cheap.

[describing her competitor, Emily Blunt, on an episode of Lip Sync Battle (2015)] She's so beautiful and has the most amazing body. That's what friendship is built on, just being happy for her (and then jabs a voodoo doll of Emily Blunt).

[after being told she looked armed and dangerous on an episode of Lip Sync Battle (2015)] I do. Good, then you believe me.

[LL Cool J] I wanna' hug him all the time.

[In 2015, when asked about her striking resemblance to George Clooney's wife, Amal Clooney, who is also a human rights attorney] I've never heard that! Thank you. That's like so gonna be the best thing to happen to me today. I hope that I become half the woman she is. She's so accomplished and it's so thrilling to look at someone and be like, "Wow. You really are making the world a better place".

[on accepting the real-life role of a goodwill ambassador] The United Nations reached out to me and and I was very interested. But it took us quite a while to figure out what my issue would be. Then life provided the answer: I got pregnant.

[nude scenes] I don't actively search for movies that I can get naked in. It's not the most fun requirement of the job, but nor is it something that I would never do a job because of. Doing nudity really is sort of a part of being an actress. You're aware that at some point it might happen.