[on being cast in Forrest Gump (1994)] My mother didn't want to take me. It was a Sunday afternoon and she really didn't want to go, so I went with some friends and Nina (Nina Axelrod) ended up liking me. They called me back a couple of times and sent my tapes from Colorado to LA and they ended up casting me.

My family moved up to the mountains when I was two, and it was wonderful. Colorado is so beautiful and I love being able to go back there. The city is difficult to live in sometimes, but it's nice to be able to go back and be in the great outdoors. I lived in Colorado until I was 18, then I went to Hawaii for school, then I lived in LA for a year, then I lived in Vancouver for a year, and now I'm back in LA.

[on The Virgin Suicides (1999)] We talked a lot about the oppression of being female in that time specifically or in history. (The Lisbons) lived in an enclosed world and it was hard for them to understand the larger world when no one would let them view it. I think that's the metaphor for why they do it.

What I love about Sunset Blvd. (1950) is that it speaks so much to the whole industry, the loss of dreams, and how people base their entire life around this popularity or fame and beauty and then eventually that fades. And what do you have? I think that says a lot, and that's the thing that I don't like about the industry.

[on working with Sofia Coppola] Sofia was wonderful. She really listened to me and the rest of the cast when it came to working on the characters. She was also really shy and I was very young, too. It was a wonderful experience.