Quotes

My whole family's been in the business. My whole family is crazy.

(On filming racy scenes on Gossip Girl (2007)) It's the most awkward thing! There's a room of 40 people watching you, they're telling you exactly how to move your head, and it's completely silent. It's awful!

In high school, there are so many cliques. You're never safe. In between my junior and senior years, I went away to film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005), and I came back ready to do the things with my friends that we always did, but things change. People get older, and there are some inside jokes that you don't know about that have happened. You feel lost for a while, and it's hard to come back from that. Then the friends who have "replaced" you are territorial. I've experienced that a little bit. There are catty, insecure, and gossipy girls everywhere, but for me, I don't think it's a matter of any of them being genuinely bad at heart. I just think that maybe the different ways in which people are raised make them different and insecure. They point out the bad things in others just to make themselves feel better. It's everywhere.

(After moving to New York to film Gossip Girl (2007)) I was raised in California, so this whole New York winter thing is completely new for me. I've already justified buying seven coats!

I've kissed just three people in my life, other than stuff I have done for TV or movies. I know, I'm weird! I hope Brad Pitt doesn't hear this, he is never going to want to marry me!

I'm on a very commercial show [Gossip Girl (2007)], so the last thing I want to do is a commercial movie. I wanna take risks, I don't wanna play it safe. I mean, I could probably make more money if I did more commercial projects. It would be nice to buy an apartment, but I'm 22, and I don't need to yet.

I want to have a brunch place, a bakery, and a Southern restaurant - because my family's from Georgia - and then I want a place that is all-over-the-world cuisine. I take a cooking class everywhere I travel. I find it's the best way to get to know a culture. It's what people bring to the family every day, what they break bread over - it's a very intimate thing.

I want babies. Lots of babies. Of course!

[on how she deals with any tension between work and anything else] - I love what I do. I love my work. So, you know, of course I wanted to be at the premiere [of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009)], but I had a job to do, and so I had to be on the set in Boston and be a part of it. At the end of the day, a premiere is a premiere. It's not somebody living or dying. So for me, this other stuff - well, the perks is not the reason I do the job. Couture fashion week, getting to meet Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano and Christian Louboutin is so exciting. It's like being a little girl and looking at these designers saying, "Can you imagine one day seeing all of those ball gowns?". But, at the end of the day, I wouldn't be there without my job. There are a few things in life that matter above all else: your family, your friends, your loved ones. But everything else comes and goes - especially in this business where everything is so of the moment.

[on where her instinct in acting comes from] - I don't know. I think it comes from the fact that I never really thought about acting as a child. It wasn't like, "This is the career that I want to pursue." So when I first started acting, I was more concerned with just being on a set and all of the woes of that, and I didn't really know it or understand it as a craft yet. When I saw my first movie, I was fine, but I thought, "Oh, my heavens. It's not about just standing there on my mark and saying these lines. I need to actually act." It was great to have my first opportunity be such a big role, but also not great because all of the mistakes I made-the entire learning process was on the big screen for everyone to see. That's been something, movie by movie, that I've been able to grow and learn from-that I always need to work harder to be better because it's still a new craft for me.

I just did it on my own. I've never worked with an acting coach, but my parents had acting classes and I grew up around them my whole life just because I didn't have a babysitter. I'm actually a very shy person-that's a big secret, so don't tell-but being in those classes pushed me to break out of that a little bit. It's like nature versus nurture: I'm naturally very shy, but I was brought up in a way where I had to get up and get out of that.

Yeah, I don't comment on my relationships... My anonymity is something I treasure. Wanting to be an actor and wanting to be famous are different.

With acting, I think half of it is just acting confident. We stand on these red carpets and pose in these dresses, but we're all only so confident. It doesn't mean we think we're great looking or anything. It's all a façade.

[on being cast as Carol Ferris in Green Lantern (2011)]: It was nice for me that this was a studio that wasn't looking for some girl to have her legs greased up and her boobs out - and that was all that mattered. I imagined that no one else knew anything about Green Lantern. As soon as I got the role I was humbled about how naive I was. They were grilling me about StarSapphire and Hector Hammond and how many Green Lanterns are going to show up. All I could say was "What are you guys talking about?".

I probably feel the most alive when I'm with my family and also when I'm cooking, and those normally coincide with each other. I love to cook for my family, that's the best. I have all my nieces and nephews there, and you really use your hands and it's such an experience for all the senses; for the touch, for the smell, for the sight, so you feel really alive.

I like to play someone who is unlike me and the character I play most often [Serena van der Woodsen on Gossip Girl (2007)]. Time and again, I keep playing drug addicts with sexual issues! I never knew I had a dark side, but this is where I get it out of my system.

I'm not in the business of trying to win the approval of my cast members, my director, or my audience. If I were, I'd be so beaten down by insecurity that I'd never be able to perform. The only person I'm trying to prove something to is myself.

[on Savages (2012)] It's especially exciting because our movie's released amongst a ton of superhero movies, and a movie like this doesn't normally exist amongst that. But, I look back to the movies that I love from the 70s, those movies were the most successful movies; the best movies were the most successful. And, now the most successful are the ones that everybody goes to see but they're not the critically-acclaimed ones. So, when we made this movie, it is such a graphic, intense, violent, honest film that we knew that we were very much the black sheep. It's not a movie that is appealing to all the masses. It will challenge people, and normally you don't want that because you want people just to pay for your movie so you don't want to challenge everyone; you want to please them all. So, the fact that this movie can stand up amongst those superpowers, all the other films, that's something that I feel really proud of. And still please them but to show that that you can be good and successful.

[on the characters in Savages (2012)] I think it's really hard for people to digest that these privileged kids are in a three-way relationship. Your heroes are all sleeping with each other, but they're also in love. It's very easy to dislike them, so when my character gets kidnapped, it's like, "Well, good riddance!". My greatest challenge was to make her life worthy of saving, to find the heart in this story.

I started thinking about the state of young people these days. In my character's situation, her mom is off with nine different husbands and her dad left her when she was a kid. She has nobody to learn from, so she's making her own mistakes. Dad takes a hike and now she's hiking up her dress for two guys. You don't think there's a parallel there? These kids are very much the product of this cynical generation.

[on her character "O/Ophelia" in Savages (2012)] To play a blond California girl who gets with two men was scary. If it looks like me and talks like me, how do I turn it into something different? It would have been easier if I'd been thrown into the movie with a Scottish accent and purple hair.

I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I grew up with the mindset that after work you go to dinner and watch a movie. I don't want to go to a club and not wear panties.

I feel like there are so many people I admire for so many reasons that I can't look at one person's life and say, "I want that life." I want to make my own history.

I just don't believe that things are that simple in life. I think certain people are the way they are for certain reasons that we can't necessarily judge without knowing.

[on if she still feels competitive for roles] You know, women are always pit against each other, and there is room for everyone. And if someone else is going to get it, there's no way I'm going to get it, and if I'm going to get it, no one else--everyone is very different. So I just think it's kind of nasty the way people are pit against each other. There are roles that I love; I think oh my gosh, I'd love that movie, I want to be in it. But also the ones that I love the most, I don't want to be in, because I don't want to mess them up! [laughter] Because I'll never be able to watch it, it's my stupid voice, and I don't want to see that! And The Age of Adaline (2015) was one of those where I thought, ah, I love the script so much, I probably shouldn't do it because I want to watch this movie on rainy days and love this movie forever. And it's just not cute when you're watching yourself on rainy days. Like, let's cuddle up to me. [laughter] That's not... that's not good.

My mom liked to infuse my life with a lot of magic. When she read my fortune cookies, the predictions were full of princesses and castles and jewels and pirates. When I got old enough to read them, I was shocked to find out how boring they really were.

[on rumors that she and husband Ryan Reynolds are purchasing a Fifth Avenue luxury apartment] Newspapers say a lot of stuff, don't they? Though I wish I could afford half the places that I hear I'm looking at. Sign me up!

All my eggs are in one basket, and its my family. That's where my heart is. that's where my everything is.

When I have bad days, I just eat lots of chocolate ice cream and dance to the 'Lion King' soundtrack. It's really odd, but it's true.

My first child is going to be the oldest sibling to the next kid, and that may change with each and every year. I'm looking forward to how one baby influences the other, and to my family as a whole, to every single chapter.

People say, 'Well, whose career do you follow? Where do you see your career going? What movie do you want to do next?' And I can't tell you what type of movie I would go and do next. I would have to read the script and feel for a character. And if I feel in my gut for a character, I know that that's somebody I have to play.