When I was growing up, yearning with my pals to be a track star, one of our heroes was Bruce Jenner. He won a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics in the decathlon, and he adorned our Wheaties boxes. We all wanted to be Bruce Jenner.

Sex and gender are such befuddling mysteries even for those of us who are in the mainstream that you'd think we'd be wary of being judgmental. Yet much of society clings to a view that gender is completely binary, when, in fact, there's overwhelming evidence of a continuum.

Neither Western donor countries like the U.S. nor poor recipients like Cameroon care much about Africans who are poor, rural and female.

The conflict in Darfur could escalate to where we're seeing 100,000 victims per month.

The thought of making a movie in which the monsters were the good guys was just financial suicide.

All the Oscars stuff for 'An Education' was incredibly exciting, especially because it was such an underdog project - no one would give us the money for it, and we all nearly gave up because it wasn't getting anywhere, then suddenly a breakthrough and this really lovely film, which then took on a life of its own.

My feeling is, well, if it's my money, I have a right to judge.

Money does not motivate me as long as I can provide for my children.