At a time when everything seems so out of control and the people you've elected are bogus and there's so much random violence and hatred, it fills you with such hope and admiration to even be part for a short time in a community where people have connected to strangers to try to put out a hand.
Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know, what did Iraq do to us?
Children reinvent your world for you.
Do you really have to be the ice queen intellectual or the slut whore? Isn't there some way to be both?
Everyone has a responsibility towards this larger family of man, but especially if you're privileged, that increases your responsibility.
How will the bombing of Baghdad, a city of five million, accomplish a regime change?
I can't even prioritize anymore I'm so completely extended in too many directions. But as a working mom, I certainly have a lot better setup because I only have to work on-and-off, I don't have a 9-to-5, constantly looking for a couple weeks' vacation. I have big clumps of time.
I feel my family's needs are a priority. I'm not comfortable with the idea of serving the many and ignoring my family.
I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point.
I never think about humiliating myself. I keep focusing on wanting to do a good job.
I think I'm an actor because I have very strong imagination and empathy. I never studied acting, but those two qualities are exactly the qualities that make for an activist.
I think sometimes what happens is that all of this feeling out of control manifests itself in trying to control your body; whether it's an eating disorder or talking about getting your nose fixed, as if that's going to be the solution to all the pressure.
I think that parents are supposed to be sexual. Anybody's parents. Even kissing your mate, to kids it's like they don't even want to go there.
I try to live my life every day in the present, and try not to turn a blind eye to injustice and need.
I was told I had an overabundance of original sin.
I'm a native New Yorker. Everything to do with New York feels like my family.
I'm tired of being labelled anti-American because I ask questions.
If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family. And that makes you at home in that world and not fearful. So really it's very self-serving.
In the U.S., they just want to know who you're sleeping with.
It is a different world than when I was growing up, and you started to just kind of maintain at thirty-five and just hope you can hope it together. People are a lot more vital than I am and doing all kinds of things and leading really important movements.
It will be great when it's not such a big deal when a woman gets a good job.
It's still not easy to find roles that offer more complex images of women.
Just because I haven't yet had any project surgery, I'm not going to knock it, because I think women have the right to do whatever they want to their bodies that make them feel good about themselves.
Making love is like hitting a baseball. You just gotta relax and concentrate.
Now, Tim has been really, really busy, and it's been my job now to kind of deal with everything. And trying to figure out how we balance that, logistically it's a nightmare. But these little jobs make it much easier.
So I initially gravitated towards solving those problems in what I considered to be my extended family, which is my city.
So I would hope they would develop some kind of habit that involves understanding that their life is so full they can afford to give in all kinds of ways to other people. I consider that to be baseline spirituality.
The only thing I can talk about is just forgiving yourself, because I do not have everything together. And so I tell people: No, you should see my house, it's a mess.
The only time I've really been away from my kids to do work was doing Shall We Dance because they both were in camp and it was the first time in twenty years that I haven't been with my kids.
To know that once you decide to look at life outside of the narrow limits of just your world and start to understand that you can make a difference in very simple ways - in volunteering and all the way up to bigger world problems.
We stand a chance of getting a president who has probably killed more people before he gets into office than any president in the history of the United States.
When I tell people I'm a comedian they say, 'Oh, are you funny?' I say, 'No, it's not that kind of comedy.'
When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.
Yeah, I think that when you're growing up, at a certain age you have a certain anxiety, and sometimes it lands on your thighs.
You guys ask really long questions. In the U.S., they just want to know who you're sleeping with.
I choose projects I can talk about for days because now you do publicity for as long as it took you to shoot the movie.
I feel I've always been on the outside and always on the edge of an abyss. The women I portray, and the woman I am, are ordinary but maybe find themselves in extra-ordinary circumstances, and what they do is at great cost.
Sexuality ... is something that develops and becomes stronger and stronger the older you get... If you can continue to say yes to life and to maintain a certain generosity of spirit, you become more and more of who you are.
I think the only reason I remain an actor is that you can never quite get it right. So there is a challenge to it.
If I were 22 and trying to build a career, I don't know who'd be watching the kids as happily as I do. It takes so much to get me to break out of domestic paradise. There's hardly anything that interests me as much as my family.
On Thelma & Louise after her nomination for best actress, 1992, "I was surprised that the film struck such a primal nerve. I knew when we were filming that it would be different, unusual and hopefully entertaining. But shocking? I guess giving women the option of violence was hard for a lot of people to accept."
People will like you for the wrong reasons your entire life, even if you don't have parents who are celebrities. They will like you because you have a car or you have money or your breasts are big.
You're so lucky in Ireland, England and Spain. Everyone there already knows what it's like to have inexplicable terrorist violence.
The thing that's bad about breasts is that you have to choose between having a mind and having breasts. It'd be nice if you could have both. Anyway, I think my breasts have been highly overrated.
The largest party in the United States is the 50 percent who don't vote.
It's always so painful to watch yourself. That never changes. I still sit there and think, 'Oh, that scene is missing? Wasn't I good? What happened there?'
I haven't yet had any plastic surgery, but I won't knock it. I think women have the right to do anything they want to their bodies that makes them feel good about themselves. It's hard to be in this business and be viewed on a screen that's huge. You can see every single line. But I think it's an aesthetic choice for the individual. I don't like it when surgeons take a perfectly interesting looking woman and she ends up looking like a female impersonator with these gigantic breasts. It's just so extreme and that worries me. I think everyone is looking the same.
My children were embarrassed at my Lincoln Center Tribute. I forgot they would show film clips and my children hadn't seen anything. Every time something a little racy would come on like 'The Hunger,' I'd look at my 13-year-old, who was shielding his eyes.
I'm certainly not an expert, but Tim and I just celebrated 17 years together, which in Hollywood years I think is 45. I think the key is just focusing on this one person and not keeping one eye on the door to see who might be better.
I remember going to great lengths to celebrate disappointments like not getting a job. I'd take whatever little cash I had and go out to dinner. I saw loss as an opportunity to change direction.
It's still not easy to find roles that offer more complex images of women. I do a lot of smaller parts that I find interesting - as opposed to the big, splashy movies that you get paid more money for.
I didn't realize that everything was supposed to fall apart at 40. So I just slid past 40 and 50. When you're an outsider and not paying attention to the rules the hurdles are a little lower.
I think the good news and the bad news is Hollywood's not political. The only thing they punish you for is getting old and fat.
I think one of the reasons I haven't married Tim is that I hate that couples assumption - that once you're committed to someone you stop treating each other as individuals. I like getting up knowing I am choosing to be with that person.
I look forward to being older, when looks become less of an issue and who you are is the point." Family Circle, 4-18-0
You have to be careful not to be upstaged by your breasts. I've gotten curvier as I've gotten older. Directors cast the men they want to be and the women they want to have.
Her partner is Tim Robbins (1988-present)
Ranked #35 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]
Attended Catholic University of America Drama School, 1964-1968. Met and married Chris Sarandon there (by priest who was head of Dept.).
Former "Ford" Model.
Has a daughter from relationship with Franco Amurri (Eva Amurri, born 1985).
Has two children by Tim Robbins, Jack Henry Robbins (b. May 1989) and Miles Guthrie Robbins (b. May 1992).
chosen by People (USA) magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful in the world [1996]
Landed her first Hollywood role when her then-husband, Chris Sarandon, took her along on one of his auditions.
As co-presenters of the Academy Awards in 1993, Susan and her partner, Tim Robbins, seized a chance to bring public attention to the plight of a few hundred Haitians with Aids who had been interned in Guantanamo Bay.
Is a UNICEF goodwill ambassador
Supported Ralph Nader during his 2000 Presidential Election campaign.
Was arrested for disorderly conduct during a protest in New York over the unarmed shooting of African immigrant Amadou Diallo by four policemen (30 March 1999).
Is of Italian and Welsh heritage.
Graduated from Edison High School in Edison, New Jersey where she was a cheerleader.
She keeps her Oscar in the bathroom.
Sang in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975); recorded a duet with Eddie Vedder which played over the end credits of "Cradle Will Rock".
Was involved in the effort to have Laura Schlessinger's television show taken off the air in 2000, because of her disagreement with Schlessinger's conservative views. The effort was successful in leading many sponsors to drop their support of the show, which was ultimately cancelled less than a year after its premiere.
Measurements: 37C-26-36 (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine)
For the past ten years she has been involved with Heifer International, an organization that donates farm animals to needy families who need the animals for work.
Is the first actress to win an Oscar for playing a nun.
Is listed along with Geena Davis on the 24th place in AFI's Hero Top 50.
Caught pneumonia after they shot the pool scene in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).
One of eight women, also among them Sophia Loren and author Isabel Allende, carrying the Olympic flag at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games' opening ceremony in Turin (10 February 2006).
Her grandmother had her mother when she was 13 years old. Her mother grew up in the care of nuns in an institute, abandoned at two.
Father was Philip Tomalin.
Parents separated in 1982, after forty of marriage.
Eldest of nine children.
In 1916, her grandfather Giuseppe Criscione emigrated to the USA from Ragusa in Sicily, where he was born in 1901. Now she is honorary citizen of Ragusa and the city gave her the "Ragusani nel Mondo" award.
Received the "World Lifetime Achievement Award" at the 2006 Women's World Award in New York.
Very good friends with fellow actress Julia Roberts.
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