The only thing that seemed to me I could do in such a way that no one else could was acting. I thought, I can be a doctor, but there’s going to be someone else who is just as good or better. I can be a lawyer, which I still sometimes think I would love to be, but I think there’s someone who can do it just as good or better. So, being an actor, there will be people who can do it just as good or better, but I’ll have my voice, and no one will have my voice.

People have such false perceptions of how stardom really works. After I won the Oscar for Pollock (2000), some newspaper printed, ‘She should get a million-dollar bump.’ My sisters would write me, ‘You’re gonna get this million-dollar bump!’ I thought, I’ll open the shutters to my hotel, and Scorsese will be on the lawn, and the lawn will be made out of emeralds. I never made less money than right after the Oscar.

[2012, on Pollock (2000)] That was exciting. That was exciting intellectually, educationally, emotionally, the craft of it. It was probably the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. It was full of museum visits and art study and painting classes. And emotional drainage. Working so closely with Ed Harris, who I just think is a genius. Long hours. Hard days. A full character. It was everything I dreamed of. And it was a tough shoot. You know, Ed wasn’t always easy [as a director], but he was always right. And he had the Pollock cap on as well. So sometimes you’d have Pollock directing you in a movie, which was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. And sometimes you would just have Ed Harris and all of his great brilliance and manliness coming from behind the camera. But I would follow Ed up any mountain trail at any time of day or night, knowing he’ll take care of me. He’s a man.

That was fantastic and [How to Get Away With Murder] is a different kind of show. It’s a whodunit, it’s a ploty, and twisty, kind of show and [Code Black] is different because it’s a formulaic show, It’s a joy. You don’t want to play the same thing your whole life so that’s the joy of acting.