"It helped that my brother was with me as my driver on Sweet Home Alabama, so he and I would fight every morning on the way to work. The accent always comes out when I'm a little bit angry."

"I knew I was smart. I didn't know I was pretty. And you know what? I don't think it's really that important."

"I think that if acting ever didn't work out for me, I could be a professional trampolinist."

"My nature is to be really super nice, open, and giving. I'm an I'll-tell-you-all-my-secrets-in-one-conversation type of person. But I've learned to be more reserved, which doesn't come naturally. I know sometimes it's not fun being friends with someone who does what I do for a living."

"When I first moved to Los Angeles, I went to see a doctor, and he said, 'Reese Witherspoon? Well, that's a name you'll never see in lights.'"

• From 2001
"Self-confidence. It's what makes people sexy."

"I do feel like I'm a very strong woman who's confident, and believes in herself. I have insecurities, but I work every day to overcome them."

"I don't fuck around. I don't think it's a joke that people put up $20 million to finance a movie. I show up. I know my lines."

"I don't want to be Tracy Flick for the rest of my life."

"I have earned the right to have an opinion, so when people don't listen to me, I get a little pissed off."

"Holly Hunter, Meryl Streep, Frances McDormand, Susan Sarandon - these are the women I want to emulate. I avoided the whole teen-movie thing because I want to be in the business for more than two years, and I made conscious decisions not to do exploitative things, because they didn't feel right to me."

• From 1999
"People want to try and move you into a place where you can be easily identifiable by every woman in America - to be this very likeable woman in a romatic comedy. And its really hard for me. I just don't see myself as the girl that everybody likes. I never have been and I don't know how to be that person."

"Don't even get me started about Hollywood actors or actresses - they're so arrogant. Around here, talent gets you into parties, it gets you great tables at restaurants, obviously it gets you great dates. But it takes a long time to understand that ultimately, it doesn't make you a good person."

"The battles that we face in this business aren't financial, but they are moral. And I certainly think that the longer you can keep your values, and your family values, and your morality intact, and keep your head on your shoulders about what is important at the end of the day, you can get the most out of this business and really emerge with something wonderful."

"Oh, I was kind of the slut of fifth grade when I was 12. I kissed a boy in a roller-rink and none of my girlfriends could believe I'd done it. But they caught up quickly and it wasn't such a big deal after that. Twelve isn't two young, is it? It was time. I couldn't hold back any more."

"I like people laughing at me. I'd much rather hear someone say, 'Oh, you look kind of funny' than 'Oh you're so pretty.'"

"Many people worry so much about managing their careers, but rarely spend half that much energy managing their lives. I want to make my life, not just my job, the best it can be. The rest will work itself out."

"I went to an all-girls' high school, so I sort of had a non-conventional high school experience. I was always just trying to fit in. I was desperate to fit in because I was doing movies at the same time, and I was trying to be just lik everyone else. I don't know. I was kid of probably like everybody else."

"I'm never surprised when a film I'm in doesn't make any money. But you always hope for the best and I've never invested in any of my films financially, it is the critical response which is really important to me."

"I see these young women who are so overtly sexual. The pictures they pose for, and the outfits they wear, with their boobs pushed up like earmuffs. And it's like, that's wonderful now, hon, when you are 20 years old, but what will you do when you are 35 and your boobs don't want to go that way anymore? Where does your self-worth or personal pride come from then? I think it is more important to start realizing at a young age that your body is just a vessel for who you are as a person. And until you work on what you give back to the wold, it doesn't matter what you look like on the outside. The body dies anyway, but what kind of lasting impression do you leave on the universe?"

"There is nothing more important to me than this child. No movie could ever compare to this child."

• From 1998
"Actually, it was liberating. I was frightened to death at first, and then I thought, I'm not embarrassed about my body. Fifty percent of the people in this country have boobs themselves; they're not looking at mine."
[On her nude scene in Twilight]

• From 1997
"Those are such formative years, and it's really hard to know who you are if you're too caught up with what your makeup looks like or your hairdo. And also I've found you make closer friends, because to this day I still know everybody and where they went - over 35 women. It's a great basis of strength in my life that I have all these close friends from high school. And we didn't have the interruptions, and we didn't need to be vicious and backbiting, because there was nothing to fight for."

• From 1996
"Really the most important thing to me is I'm in it for the long haul. I don't want to be one of those overnight sensations that just climbs to the top and falls right down. I really feel like this is sort of what I was meant to do. I really feel like I was put on this Earth to tell a story in any way, shape or form that I can tell it. And I think that comes from taking life and film in increments and success in tiny, tiny bits instead of the huge inundation of press and all that rigmarole that comes with having a hit movie. Thank God none of my movies have made any money. God forbid they should ever make any money."

• From 1994
"It's tough making movies. Six months out of the year I live entirely with strange adults, and then I come home to Tennessee and live with my parents for the rest of the year, just trying to be a normal kid."