HELEN HUNT

I've always had to force myself to make friends and speak to people. My parents were quiet, and it took me a while to get used to the fact that people talk about their feelings, their problems.

Movie acting is a great job for your twenties: You travel all over, you have affairs with people, and you throw yourself into one part and then another. It gets more challenging as you get older, and it's not just having a daughter, it's wanting to have your own life and be yourself.

The Oscar sits on some shelf above my desk. If there was an earthquake, I could actually be killed by my own Academy Award.

I actually have a life I said I wanted to have. I wanted to tell stories I want and be with my family. I'm whispering it, because I'm a quarter Jewish and afraid it's all going to be taken away.

I'm taking a philosophy class and regretting it with everything in me. I'm taking one college class per semester. Philosophy is studying what you already know and dismantling it. I thought it would be right up my alley. I can't tell you how much it's not me.

But the truth is I wanted to have my daughter for so long. It's not the kind of thing you can visit, motherhood. Especially in the early years. Now she's eight, and I'm still not going to go anywhere.

I think that all of us are 5-year-olds and we don't want to be embarrassed in the schoolyard.

I've been offered a couple of shows that have been very successful, but they weren't right for me. It has to be something I could be excited about for a long time.

When you first entered the restaurant, I thought you were handsome... and then, of course, you spoke.

It's getting too late in my life to care about the small things. It's getting too late to not be brave, to not live my life fully, to not try to be an artist. Trivial things like how nice your hotel room is, or if you have to be naked for a while, they fade away.

I haven't watched anything I've been in since I've done it. I have never put in a movie at home that I've been in. Why? I don't know. I would feel like Norma Desmond. And I have a kid, so time is at a premium.

The best movies have one sentence that they're exploring, a thesis, something that people can argue about over dinner afterward.

I have to say, my celebrity is not a big factor in my life. Once in a while someone takes my picture. But I'm not exactly one of the four girls everyone's chasing at the moment.

You either have a baby, want a baby, or don't want a baby, but you don't nothing a baby if you're in your 30s or 40s.

I think I have more of a director's brain than an actor's brain, in a way.

I don't wish I started later, but I was never a child star. I was in school every year and had normal friends and I loved it and here I am, so I can't say that I wish I hadn't done it. I used to say, 'No, I didn't miss any of my childhood,' but it is a very adult place to be, a movie set. Like, it's a little weird.

We all feel disabled in some way. We all feel imperfect. It's hard to be looked at for various reasons.

I know you're always supposed to want more of everything. But in truth, I'm having a nice ebb and flow of being in my daughter's life every day and getting to keep my work life alive. I'm not nominated for ten thousand everythings every minute, but I am acting and telling stories I love.

I think if my daughter was interested in acting, I would find ways for her to act in theater that has to do with her school or a kids' improvisational thing. There are ways to do it where you're not on a movie set with 60 adults, which I loved at the time, but as a parent, I don't know that I'd be dying to put her in that spot.

I loved Julia Louis-Dreyfus's show 'The New Adventures of Old Christine.' That made me laugh out loud. She's like Lucille Ball. She's brilliant.

You have five seconds to enjoy it and then you remember who you didn't thank.

I wanted to have a personal life that I fully inhabited, not because I am such a great mom, but for me.

I've worked for a long time, but I got to the point where I felt like, I am out here so far, how do I get back? I want to have a real life, a personal life. I didn't want a personal life I just visited.

I think that all of us are 5-year-olds and we don't want to be embarrassed in the schoolyard. I've gone through things in my life. People say it must be so hard to do it in the public eye, but the truth is, when you go through hard things, it's just hard.

I worked before I had my daughter, enough for three actresses.