Good female parts are hard to come by, so I go all over the place to find them: cable TV, network movies of the week, foreign films, independent American films, studio films, the stage.

What's great about cable is that the ceiling of expectation is lowered because fewer people have to tune in for it to be a success. You don't need 23 million people a week like you do in broadcast.

I've been blessed in my career to be able to do studio and independent films.

You could just do independent movies, but I like bigger kind of studio movies, at least some of them.

In many parts, I start from the outside and then it triggers things within. For 'The Piano,' I went, 'I'm going to learn these piano pieces. I'm going to learn this sign language, and I'm going to do them all day every day, five days a week.' It was a totally physical thing.

I think Ada in 'The Piano' is the most interior character I've ever had the chance to play, either on the stage or in anything I've done for film or TV.