When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films.

Some of the roles that are challenging are more in theater and TV. In movies, there's a tendency to cast actors in roles that have been successful for them. It has to pay for itself.

It's a political and manipulative industry. Actors vie for the same roles, movies are snatched away. Have I ever been manipulated? Yes. But I haven't manipulated anyone because if you think from the heart, you cannot be calculative. I have spent nights crying.

Everybody was trying to put me in action movies and heroic roles, and I wanted to find more complex things. They just didn't suit my taste, so I thought, 'OK, I have to be brave enough to say no.' And for a while, that hurt me immeasurably in the Hollywood world.

I sort of have open invitations from a lot of people to do TV. But it's very hard for me to do roles in sitcoms and movies because I'm not a great actor, so if the material isn't good, I'm in torment while I do it.

Some of the best roles are for women in these independent, smaller movies.

My role models are Madhuri Dixit and Kajol. Both actresses have done a wide variety of roles. That is something I wish to do. On the other hand, I also want to be like a Hugh Jackman or an Angelina Jolie because of the lives they have outside movies. Because of the kind of balance they strike between their work and life outside of it.

Of all the roles I've played, none has been as fulfilling as being a mother.

Men and women have roles - their roles are different, but their rights are equal.

Yes. I'm a doctor, an epidemiologist, and lots of my professional colleagues flip back and forth between industry and medical roles. I know them; they are not bad people. But it is possible for good people in bad systems to do things that inflict enormous harm.

We don't put gender roles on our marriage and our relationship. If I'm working a lot and Cory's home, he will put Cree to bed, and if dishes need to be washed, he will wash them. So it's not like, 'Oh, I'm going to wait until my wife gets home, and she's going to be doing all that.'

The social and legal discrimination that relegates hundreds of women to subordinate or marginal economic roles has a huge aggregate cost.

I've become so earthy. And I never was earthy. I'm doing all kinds of different roles which are not at all like the intellectual and the legal mind of Ben Stone.

Giving married women an independent legal existence did not destroy heterosexual marriage. And allowing husbands and wives to construct their marriages around reciprocal duties and negotiated roles - where a wife can choose to be the main breadwinner and a husband can stay home with the children - was an immense boon to many couples.

Even after such milestones as Kathryn Bigelow winning an Oscar, there still seem to be few women in leadership roles.

I think it is important for people who are given leadership roles to assume that role immediately.

Among my activities was membership in the Boy Scouts; I rose each year through the ranks, eventually achieving the rank of Eagle Scout and undertaking leadership roles in the organization.

There is a sense of call to take leadership roles. You're serving people and submitting to God as best you can.

I have always believed that more stories of women in leadership roles need to be told and I am glad I could be a part of one such story.

One of the problems in the biotech world is the lack of women in leadership roles, and I'd like to see that change by walking the walk.

If more women are in leadership roles, we'll stop assuming they shouldn't be.

Seeing RuPaul go out there and not only create music, but TV and film roles, and continue to go down so many creative avenues - that is inspirational. For a person of color like myself, I see RuPaul and I say, 'Oh, honey, I can do it too.'

I think it's great that you have inspirational female roles, that it's not just the pretty girl on the arm of a man.

I personally think the male and female roles have changed dramatically in the past few decades. Men are no longer the breadwinners. Financial independence for a woman is a huge thing.