On The Merchant of Venice:

“For me to be 25, it’s interesting how she’s so much more mature and intelligent than the other characters I’ve played, like Juliet and Ophelia, so it was really gratifying to do it at this point in my life.”

“Originally I was asked to choose between auditioning for Jessica or Nerissa. And [writer/director] Mark Radford saw the tape [in which] I choose Jessica. He saw the tape and he said, ‘No, this is Portia.’ And then I put myself on tape for two of the main monologues. Michael loved the first one and then told me that the second one was total crap (laughing). So he had me put those monologues back on tape, including many other scenes of Portia’s. That was the tape that they ended up sort of showing to all the producers, and showing to Al Pacino. They all approved me and just began to really fight to cast me because, you know, they needed a name in some ways they had decided. So for them to cast somebody who was relatively unknown was a really big step for them.”

“If we had not had the rehearsal period, this movie would not get made. It was to the point where we would have like let’s say four shots… Like filming a movie as if you were doing a TV show. So you would have four or five shots that have to get taken care of. If you didn’t get them, then we would just never have them. So we had four weeks of rehearsal, two in New York and two in London. We were able to map out what we were going to try to do at least acting-wise with each scene so that when we actually got onto set in these palazzos in Venice, which is a nightmare to shoot in, that we would have a map of exactly what as actors we needed to be thinking about. Michael and the D.P. and the rest of the crew could then put it all together.”

“I think the feminine aspects of Portia were not really anything I needed to work on. That sort of came naturally. It was the boy, Balthazar, that I spent the most of my research time on. Because it was very difficult for me to take away the emotion of the trial scene, and to take away the morality of it. It is difficult for an actor to go in there and clean the floor with everybody. It was a difficult scene to tackle. And for me, psychologically, very trying.”

“The other layer to this is, unfortunately, the intolerance, the anti-Semitism, the lack of forgiveness and morality. It’s even more prevalent today. It’s not necessarily just more conflicts between Christianity and Judaism. It’s every religion, every race. Even now the way that sexuality is being cut up and tossed around. It seems to be just a part of humanity, our intolerance, and the levels are just growing. I hope people walk out going, ‘It was 1595. We’re on the brink of 2005. What has really changed and why aren’t we learning? What is going to stop this, if it’s ever going to stop?’”

“I love the fact that period pieces can give you so much more to get into the character. So it’s not period pieces that I love. I mean, I also love history. I’m a big history buff. When you are hired to do a part that’s in a different time period, you’re basically given free time to learn and teach yourself about that time period. That’s probably what I enjoy. And of course the different hair, the different clothes, it allows you to take on this person in a way that say if I was to play a character that had my hairdo and my style, it really for me wouldn’t feel like acting. I like the disappearing act that one can do.”