One of the things that we’re talking about a lot in this day and age is how to diversify who directs movies, and how to create more opportunities for female directors. You write about loving directors and working with Allison Anders on Grace of My Heart. What’s your take on this ongoing discussion?

“I wrote in the book that my first love was learning about the director. My grandfather gave me a book and it was called The Men Who Made The Movies. It wasn’t called, you know, ‘and the women.’ When I was growing up, I just thought men were directors, and men made the movies. So the only role models that I had were these incredibly strong women actresses. You know, Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange, people like that, or some of the classic Hollywood stars. As I started to get success, especially with the film To Die For, I started to discover other female filmmakers, especially the work of a French film director named Agnès Varda. She had done this movie called Vagabond, which just blew me away. At the time, I was in a romantic relationship with Martin Scorsese — again, not known for making ‘women’s pictures.’ He had this collaboration with Robert De Niro and that inspired me to feel like, Well, why not, I would like to have a collaboration with a female director. At the same time, I happened to get cast in this extremely low budget film called Grief by the late director Richard Glatzer... It got into Sundance, and while I was at Sundance I saw Gas Food Lodging and I met Allison Anders and there was just something about that film that so inspired me and brought me back to Agnès Varda. It felt like, this is what I’ve been missing, working with a male director. After Allison I’ve worked with at least seven or eight female directors. More so than most people. After Grace of My Heart I actually had female directors seeking me out and saying, ‘Will you be in my movie or support this film?’”

Grace of My Heart was 20 years ago now. Have you seen any change in how female directors and female creators are perceived in the industry since that time?

“Absolutely. When we did the movie it was sort of like the glory of independent filmmaking and the '90s… Penny Marshall was working, Nora Ephron was working, Barbra Streisand was making films. All these female independent filmmakers’ movies were coming out, like [Nicole Holofcener’s] Walking and Talking with Catherine Keener. Then all of the sudden it’s as if we hit this glass ceiling and then it became harder and harder for someone like Allison Anders to get her movies made.”