Youth

Laura Dern: The great news about the endless challenges you had raising me as a single parent is that, when you brought me with you on location, I got an up-close view...

Paula Vogel: In my advanced playwriting class at Brown, there was an exercise where I asked people to write a play with a dog as protagonist, and Sarah wrote about the dog...

Juliette Lewis: I first met Sophie in a big office building in Burbank before we shot the pilot . We were both like, “Oh, it’s you!” She plays a younger version of...

Shirin Neshat: Last spring, I was thinking about making a video about the sexual exploitation of female political prisoners by the Islamic Republic’s regime in Iran, and I needed the voice of...

Anna Deavere Smith: I have a mentee named Samora Pinderhughes , and he does an exercise with my N.Y.U. class where he brings in jazz musicians. A couple of years ago, he...

Laurie Simmons: My father was a first-generation American small-town dentist on Long Island with an office off our kitchen and a darkroom in the basement; I’d sit at his feet as he...

Denyce Graves: I hear wonderful voices all the time, but that does not a career make. Ego’s absolutely necessary. When you’re standing up in front of thousands of people, you have to...

Jamie Nares: I’ve learned a lot from my daughters. Watching you draw has been one of the greatest delights of my life. And I find that now, I’m becoming influenced by you....

Maria Grazia Chiuri: My love for art is very personal. When I see something that strikes me, I try to meet the person who made it. I may not have a degree...

Margaret Cho: If I go back and look at my comedy sets from the ’90s, my voice was all over the place. It was this confusion of, “Who am I supposed to...