I understand there are inevitable things that we have to go through: heartbreak, family problems. I don’t feel like some Quixotic idiot who says, ‘We don’t have to feel pain.’ No! Let’s feel it, let’s make it work for ourselves. But I want us all to be able to get past it.
What’s helped me is having really good friends I know I can rely on. Cameron Diaz is one of the greatest friends anyone can ever have. She has so much love to give.
I don’t even have voice mail or answering machines anymore. I hate the phone, and I don’t want to call anybody back. If I go to hell, it will be a small closet with a telephone in it, and I will be doomed and destined for eternity to return phone calls.
Being a Barrymore didn’t help me, other than giving me a great sense of pride and a strange spiritual sense that I felt OK about having the passion to act. It made sense because my whole family had done it and it helped rationalise it for me.
I’m very sensitive to the English language. I studied the dictionary obsessively when I was a kid and collect old dictionaries. Words, I think, are very powerful and they convey an intention.
I don’t think that life happens by sitting back and waiting. People hold their cards so tight to their chest. Life is short. Tell people you love them. What’s the worst that’s going to happen?
