Quotes from Toni Collette

Meditation is an essential aspect of my life.

I don't feel I owe anyone anything.

I believe the more important thing is your mind and your heart. Those two things are the most ignored parts of our beings.

Lars Von Trier is a genius. Every film he makes is so honest and powerful.

The people who are most attractive to me are those who feel most comfortable in their skin - there's a sense of self-acceptance.

Whether it's a movie I'm in or not, if there's a good movie, and it's low budget, and you know everyone's done it just because they were passionate about it and they cared for it, if it has any kind of audience, it's just a wonderful outcome.

People are so fearful about opening themselves up. All you want to do is to be able to connect with other people. When you connect with other people, you connect with something in yourself. It makes you feel happy. And yet it's so scary - it makes people feel vulnerable and unsafe.

I'm a fan of music, some rock music. But I like many types of music. But I suppose a kind of longstanding love of specific bands would be Radiohead, Wilco, Neil Young, Tom Waits, REM.

Oh, I definitely want to direct. I have young children. My job is already big enough, and I imagine it will be even more so as a director, and I don't want to miss out on them growing up. I'm going to wait until they're a bit older before I leap into that seat.

I've done a couple of films in Philadelphia, and it's a great, great town.

Cameron and I actually do wear the same size. It made it very easy for the wardrobe department.

I just want to find some inner peace, and I think I'm getting there, slowly but surely.

I want variety. I want versatility. Otherwise, I'm wasting the opportunity of being an actor, which is all about variation and change.

I think that the Japanese culture is one of the very few cultures left that is its own entity. They're just so traditional and so specific in their ways. It's kind of untouched, it's not Americanized.

I've never had a game plan. It's just if something comes along and it feels right in the moment.

I prefer comedies when they come from a dark kind of place and have a reality to it.

Mothers are so awesome. They do so much. They wear so many hats and have very passionate relationships with their kids, and with life, and I think it's a real balance having your own existence and then being this responsible, kind of loving person in someone else's life or several other people's lives.

After 'Muriel's Wedding,' I first went to America, and I was sent all these scripts about fat girls overcoming hurdles. Something in me knew not to go down that road, even if it was a good script.

My plan is to have no plan. If you know what plan you have, life has its own ideas and will take you in any direction it pleases. So my idea about life is to just be open to it and to go with the flow and go with my gut.

There are actors who are really fantastically talented at being natural on screen and appearing to be themselves, but I like the challenge of becoming somebody else.

The potential strength of female friendship and the bonds that can be formed, especially over a lifelong relationship, is very profound.

Being in the desert was brilliant and it was hard.

A life without glitter is no life at all.

Hal Ashby is one of my favorite filmmakers.