Quotes

I was drawn to the performing arts out of a desire to connect emotionally and on a deeper level with our humanity... I love history and I love exploring a character's psyche and background and finding out what inspires them.

Life is precious. Since we get to live life out loud, shouldn't we make the most of it?

[on discovering the 15 per cent of rape victims are girls under 12] When I found that out, I had to take action. How can we walk around thinking we live in a healthy society when this is how society looks at a young girl? We are sexualizing children. We are sexualizing our daughters, and I have to say I really don't know why.

I know from experience that as an actor it's all about the way you look. There is nothing else that really matters. Talent counts, but they see it as secondary to the way a woman looks. And she has to be sexy, and she has to be accessible. If she won't work as eye-candy, she won't work.

Only three per cent of executive decision makers in the media are women. Three per cent - out of the thousands of women who work in your industry - only three per cent have any power to change things. If you want to look at why women are so misrepresented, that's where you start.

I came to the world of entertainment after living in Africa, and living with bush men, so I think I was already seeing things differently than most actresses who end up here. But I'd go to the movies and look at the women on the screen. The roles were always small. The characters were always sexualized, and if if there was a female protagonist at all, she was the sidekick who was objectified. I was shocked at how pathetic it all was.