I was not big on playing house. I preferred make-believe that revolved around adventure, featuring pirates and knights. I was also domineering, impatient, relentlessly verbal, and, as an only child, often baffled by the mores of other kids.

The 10 or 20 minutes I was somebody's mother were black magic; there is no adventure I would have traded them for.

I think it would be difficult to argue that I'm a net-negative for womankind. I've tried pretty hard to bring in unusual female voices and perspectives. Not just young women and not just white women, either. I don't know that I'm the best target for improvement. I don't know that I'm the problem.

I decided early that I would be a writer when I grew up. That, I thought, was the profession that went with the kind of woman I wanted to become: one who is free to do whatever she chooses.

I would love to be producing movies, acting in more movies, and doing projects that are Oscar-worthy... have kids, be married, all that, being a normal human being as well, balancing it all out.

I've always loved silent movies. I recently saw 'Tilly's Punctured Romance' at the Academy, which is the first comedy made with Charlie Chaplin in 1914, and I sat there, and I couldn't believe that the entire audience of 2,000 people were laughing that hard from a movie made in 1914 - and there were no words; it was all faces.

In the early days of our marriage, Stephen could walk around Cambridge on my arm - a stick on one hand, leaning on me with the other. I carried a baby on one arm and Stephen on the other.

The Beverly Cinema in L.A. screens old, artsy movies for half the price of regular theaters. It has an old-school vibe to it. It's cheap, and the selection of movies is always interesting and different. Very romantic!