I'm The Mother Of Two Daughters, One

The Film Festival Is In A Town In Arkansas, A Quintessentially American Town With A Little Town Square. It's To Champion Women And Diversity In All Media, So Tv, Movies, Eventually, Digital, Whatever You Get Into. That's The Goal. We're Using The Same Philosophy As My Institute, Which Is To Make It Research-based And Really Try To Work Directly With Filmmakers And Content Creators And Move The Needle. It's The Only Film Festival In The World Where The Prizes Are Guaranteed Distribution.

I Told My Parents When I Was Three That I Wanted To Be In Movies. I Don't Know What I Saw At Three Years Old That Would Make Me Decide That's A Job And I Want To Have That Job. But I Was Very Confident, Very Sure That's What I Wanted To Do. I Didn't Do Anything About It. I Didn't Prove It To Myself Or Anything. I Just Knew.

I Realized That In All The Sectors Of Society Where There's A Huge Gender Disparity, The One Place That Can Be Fixed Overnight Is Onscreen. You Think About Getting Half Of Congress, Or The Presidency ... It's Going To Take A While No Matter How Hard We Work On It. But Half Of The Board Members And Half Of The Ceos Can Be Women In The Next Movie Somebody Makes; It Can Be Absolutely Half.

Nobody Ever Said, "well If You Want To Be In Movies, You Should Go To L.a." Everybody Else Was Going To New York. So I Went To New York With Them. And Then I Was Like, "how Am I Supposed To Get A Movie?"

I Remember Very Distinctly Being So Tall I Didn't Fit Sleeves, So I Ended Up Modeling Lingerie And Bathing Suits, Sleeveless Stuff, Basically. I Didn't Have A Good Body, But I Believed I Knew How To Stand Or Pose To Mask It.