When I do a film, usually I work from my director. That's my boss. The director is interpreting the writer's vision, and we all interpret it, and they create their own vision as well.
— Juliette Lewis
I used to be really insular, really introverted. I couldn't articulate myself.
Nobody would know it to look at me, but the movies I liked as a kid were musicals - 'All That Jazz,' 'Hair,' 'Fame,' 'Annie,' all that stuff - that's where my little youthful imagination was.
So many actors and musicians seem to be only interested in what's expected of them, and they join the dots accordingly. I don't fit into any narrow categories as an actor or a singer.
If you could place blame on entertainment for all the crimes people commit, you'd be in court all the livelong day.
I've always been an outsider. I've always been attracted to roles that would challenge me and that wouldn't come around very often.
My parents are just the best.
Why I talk so seriously about art is that art is the only thing that helps people stay alive, and it is the only thing that has allowed people to create joy in this insane, suppressive universe. And art is the only thing that they can't get rid of. They've tried, but ultimately they can't stamp it out.
I'm actually very moral and nurturing, but I'm also adventurous. I am challenging.
I get lonely - I'm not going to lie about that... I kind of signed up in my mind that I'm giving myself wholeheartedly, full-throttle to my creative life, and I don't want to be distracted.
For me, the most challenging thing was developing myself as a songwriter and as a performer and as the leader of a band. And I just did it.
I wrote songs when I was little, and I wrote a journal, but I don't think I knew how to let that truth come out yet.
Leaving your home can be a fear at times. You gotta make yourself get out.
If someone tells you over and over that everything's great, you immediately think, 'OK, what's the rest of the story?'
In movies like 'Cape Fear,' I never played verbal characters. Now, as a grown-up, I relish playing people that are not like myself. That's what I enjoy about acting.
I don't care about labels or anything.
I've been around for a long time now, and you start to hear these urban legends about yourself.
I actually would not want the pressure of a lead in a series.
I recommend everyone wakes up in the morning to Bachman Turner Overdrive's 'Taking Care Or Business' - you'll feel better.
I was singing before I acted, but I was also attracted to drama, and, y'know, I got successful at that, which isn't a bad thing.
I've always been the opposite of mainstream. I march to my own beat. It's the only way I know.
I haven't made a career off my looks, thank God, but hopefully how I've moved people emotionally, the directors I've been able to work with, and the stories I've been a part of.
It always surprises me when people say, 'I don't regret one thing about my life. I wouldn't change anything because it's all led me to where I am today.' I would want to change certain things that have caused others pain.
I've never really cared if I was famous for my music. It was just something I had to do.
The praise for 'Cape Fear' will help me work more artfully - I can work with real artists, like Robert De Niro and the directors, and then go to artland, which is the best land to be in in this world.
When you become famous at 19, it does a number in your head, so you find romance in the mundane - isn't it so great that a guy would pick me up at my house and take me to a restaurant?
I always liken myself to the bearded lady. Because I'm an actress turned musician, a woman doing male-dominated rock & roll... I'm the oddity at the freak show, you know?
It's always been my dream to have a monster rhythm section that's just all groove and pocket.
The old footage of my dad, I always knew we were cut from the same cloth, because my dad was such a renegade and always marched to the beat of his own drum. To see where we were both dancing and being silly together, it's too beautiful for words. I was really happy to have that.
I was meant to make music in my soul way younger than I did. I was just scared because I knew it would take more of me than anything else. But I was all into facing my fears.
I was scared by social media - just scared of what I might attract. Once I broke onto that thing, because I needed it for my band to tell people about shows, I realized, 99 percent of the time, people are funny, clever, inventive, beautiful.
I'm expressive and animated.
I have a huge fear of crowds. The irony is that my band is a therapeutic exercise. I hurl myself into thousands of people.
The mainstream media is funded by pharmaceutical companies, so when you have the biggest movie star in the world at the time - Tom Cruise - coming out against anti-depressants and Ritalin... they still brutalize him.
There is growth. Get out of the past.
Over time, I've loved jazz, Miles Davis and Chet Baker, then Janis and Jimi and Creedence, then classic rock.
I've never been like Angelina Jolie, who at one time was spewing out this prototype Bad Girl stuff for people to consume. I've never boxed myself in that way. People can create boxes for me by all means, but it doesn't mean I'm going to step inside them.
I walk into a restaurant, and people stare as though I've just landed from another planet. Every time I walk out in public, it's like the alien freak show has arrived. It does have its advantages. I hardly ever get bothered by the paparazzi, probably because of some of the more edgy characters I've played in movies.
I sort of got lucky in that I was able to carve a niche for myself.
My dad instilled in me to naturally question all authority. I don't follow anything blindly. That's religion, cops, doctors, schools, you name it.
It's only artists who can help artists.
What do I think being wild is? Nothing. Actually, the whole world is wild. Everything is wild. There we go.
I hate dates. It becomes a weird auditioning process. And I've never had normal dating.
I think in my late 20s, I was starting to enter that realm of complacency, which is the most terrifying place I can imagine as an artist. I felt time creeping up on me.
In acting, you have a writer, a director, a character - you're working through being another person - and the irony I always tell people is when I acted early on as a teenager, it actually kept me out of trouble.
My brother has endless footage of us as kids because he had a video camera when we were growing up. The trippiest part was my younger self predicting my future path, like a truth-seer.
Musically, I wear many hats. I'm the social media director. I conceptualise the videos, write the songs, do the press. I'm not a major label act.
I have people come up to me who love 'The Other Sister,' or 'Old School,' or 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape.'
I just care about what I get to unearth and what makes me uncomfortable and what makes me grow because, ultimately, I just don't want to ever play it safe.
Of course I grew up with the 'Vacation' movie with the legendary Anthony Michael Hall.
