I'm in kind of a strange position - I have a strong Australian career and a strong British career. Then there's the American career. For every movie I do here, I do two somewhere else. I bounce back and forth between the three places.

A lot of actresses feel the pressure to constantly look good, to constantly show how well-toned every inch of their bodies are and how much they've been to the gym, not necessarily to do justice to the role they're in, but to point out to the producers out there, 'Hey, look what I've got - remember me for your next project.'

I have a real problem with watching movies where I see this perfect woman who is married to the man in question, who has a perfect life, who has perfect hair, perfect clothes, and doesn't give you any of the kind of reality that you're used to.

Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life, equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises, truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many.

In the '60s, my father, Wally Amos, had been a talent agent and a personal manager before taking a major career detour in 1975, when he opened a store selling chocolate chip cookies.

Growing up in Nashville, especially in a music business family, means growing up with knowledge that seems like common sense until later in life when you realize people spend thousands of dollars a semester trying to learn or pretending to learn while looking for some intern job on music row.

The trouble is the field of science, medicine, universities, biotech companies - you name it - have been so splintered, layers, sub-divided, hacked that people can spend their entire career studying one tiny little cog of life.