It was more fun dreaming about being a movie star than actually being one.

I think of myself as an actor and not a movie star. I like doing movies; I enjoy it. But, essentially, I'm a theater actor. That's the only place I feel like I actually am a star. In the theater, I can put people in the seats and sell tickets.

I'm not a movie star. I'm an actor, clearly, but at the same time, I don't have anything else going on. My hobbies are movies and going to the Film Forum and sitting there during the day for the double feature. That's my life. My life is music, books and movies, that's all I know. That's all I care about and I mean, as a fourteen year old kid, I was reading Entertainment Weekly and was curious about what was going on and I still read US Weekly. I don't give a shit. The point is that I wish that I had life outside of this, and I think that if this is what I'm doing then at least I want it to be a little bit more interesting or important.

My Hollywood dream started when I was young … I was a huge fan of Steve McQueen, Tom Cruise, Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergmann and all these giants even though it was difficult for me to get into this business.

That first experience of making movies was like being in heaven. I was so happy. Everyone treated me so well. I was so curious about acting; I love watching movies, so I really enjoyed it. Once, I was rehearsing on the set, and I felt so sad that people were leaving at the end of the day, but then I was relieved that we could keep doing this on the next day.

I have never felt that Hollywood is mine, and I've never felt like the King of Hollywood. I've always felt lucky to be included... to be invited to the party. I guess because I've never expected my career to be as successful as it has been – I'd still be acting for free in Dallas, Texas if La Bamba had never come along. This has always been my love and my passion – my work – and so to be doing it at the level I'm doing, I'm quite happy…

Movies were much better in the days when I was doing them.

When I was 5 or 6, I already was telling people, I want to be a movie star. I was already a movie fan, though at the time I thought the actors were actually behind the screen. As a boy, my dream was just to be a movie star; later, I wanted to be an actor.

I’m not a star. I’m just a working actor. Being a ‘movie star’ is not what defines me as a person. What defines me is the smile I’m able to put on someone’s face.

I wanted to be a movie star. But movie stars are not what they used to be. When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now...And people my age don't even know who those people are. I can't even have a conversation with most people of my generation about that, because they'd be like, "Okay, she's a freak..." And the worst part is, in terms of what people see of me, I have become this girl who just loves to be photographed, doesn't know how to focus, doesn't know how to work on set, just loves the attention, knows how to go out at night, knows how to party. And you know what? I was 20 years old. I never went to college. And I lived maybe six months out of my life like that, doing something wrong, and then I stopped. God forbid I should have ever learned my lesson. But at this point it's so hard for people to even believe that there was a lesson to be learned at all, because they just think I'm wrong. All these people think I'm never going to be right, because it's more interesting to fabricate this other girl. Who wants to read a tabloid story about a girl who is doing well?

We did not see ourselves as remaking cinema at the time, at least not in my view. Myself and the other actors were not part of the industry; we weren’t inside the star system. We were running around, shooting in the streets, hiding behind trees to do our makeup. It was a very simple way of working.

Like most people thought about movie stars, I thought about politicians.

I just like the activity of going to a set and working. It was sort of my hobby, in those days, besides running the house and having the children and all. The acting was a vacation. It was like a housewife’s vacation. I’d go put on costumes and learn my lines and be in front of the lights. So, in point of fact, I didn’t really care what the part was. I was just happy to go and do whatever.

I loved making films. There was something about that lens that I adored, and it adored me back. So we were a great combination.