[on her marriage] We were both taught, "You pick your friends on how they treat you - not by what they have or what they look like". We get twice the cultures.

I'm a mom and a wife. That's what I do in the world. That's my identity. Second, I'm an actor.

[on Bérénice Bejo's performance in The Past (2013)] As Marie in Asghar Farhadi's "The Past," Bérénice Bejo has a daunting task. She plays a woman in an increasingly grim dilemma, which is largely of her own making. Yet somehow, in her passionate eyes, we see glimpses of Marie's hope for, and even belief in, a loving future for herself and her family. Such are Bérénice's gifts that her performance remains unadorned, yet deeply layered. So the film's increasingly tragic revelations feel at once inevitable and utterly surprising. Berenice's taut yet unstrained simplicity anchors Farhadi's film and serves as the gravitational center for her fellow actors. As always, Ms. Bejo's luminous face wordlessly expresses the depths of emotion that the filmmaker wishes us to know.

I'm on the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. We spent a year accumulating all the data out there on how arts infused into students' education affects their grade point averages, graduation rates, discipline.

I've surrendered to Facebook just to maintain a relationship with my children. I also follow them on Twitter. They're witty, irreverent, hip. I have only eight friends. Otherwise, it becomes a job.

I come from a FULL house of storytellers. If they wanted to simply tell you about someone pouring the tea, it would take about ten minutes. They would act out all the parts. I had to kind of jump in there because, as the youngest, if I wanted to get in an opinion, I had to yell and jump and really participate. In addition to participating, I was also observing. I think an actor really has to be an observant person. Not necessarily remembering facts, not observing THAT way.

Somehow, by just keeping myself up and available and free, so that when I do have work, I can approach it simply as an actress, not an irate, mistreated black actress. And because I take myself to that place, or try to keep myself at that place, the spirit has always provided for me. I've always had work. I've never gotten rich doing it, but I could die tomorrow and say that I've had a FULL artistic life.

I call myself an actor. I mean, when did you last go to the doctress?