I'm the git in the family....

If you explode onto the scene at a very young age, there are so many people pulling you in different directions. It takes time to recalibrate and see what's important.

I think that Phil Kaufman is one of the best directors that I have come across.

A huge part of acting in movies is appetite. You do your best work when you've got a lot of appetite and you really want to embrace something. When you get tired, you don't have that hunger.

As you age naturally, your family shows more and more on your face. If you deny that, you deny your heritage.

I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.

My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.

In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.