Although you've been working steadily in independent films, "Breaking and Entering," which opened last month, represents a kind of big-release comeback for you. Were you intentionally staying away from more mainstream films? No, not intentionally, but I've always wanted to taste the unknown, and mainstream films do not usually channel the unknown. People say I turned a lot of parts down, and I guess I did. But film, as a medium, is, in my mind, about sharing. And if I don't have anything to share with a movie or a character, then what's the point? Yes, but Anthony Minghella, who directs you in "Breaking and Entering," did offer you a role in "The English Patient," which eventually went to Kristin Scott Thomas. It was a great part, and she was nominated for an Oscar. That's true, but in my life, my kids are top priority. When they sent me "The English Patient," I was either pregnant, or I'd just had the baby. I thought, Great script, but 16 weeks in Tunisia does not sound like the easiest place to have an infant. If you make the choice to stay at home, you lose position in the industry no matter how talented you are. It's all about box office, and when the audience no longer knows you, it's hard. The truth is, I got to do what I wanted to do, which was being a mom. So, when Minghella called this time, I said yes immediately. It also happens that my kids are now 15 and 13, and they're saying, "Get out of the house already — go back to work." When you were around your daughter's age, you were "discovered" while you were roller-skating in a disco. A photographer suggested that you could be a model. He actually did that cliché Hollywood thing where you frame someone's face and make a click like you're taking a picture. I had no idea what world I was entering, but I got jobs as a model. I went to Paris for almost a year, but I was too short, so I would only get work in catalogs. It was the most humiliating job: once, Patrick Demarchelier was casting a shoot for French Vogue, and he lined six of us up and said, "Let me see your breasts." I showed him.

He shook his head: "Yours are not as good as hers." That's when you build a shield around you. The rejection is so destructive, and you insulate yourself in a kind of defensive cocoon. But then you were cast as the pure, prototypical heroine in "The Princess Bride." She was anything but guarded. I was 20 when I did it, and I had lost every part in every John Hughes movie ever made. When I auditioned for "The Princess Bride," I was Buttercup No. 537. The producers and the director were so tired. They saw me at the end of a long day on a Friday, and I think they just said, "We can't see another Buttercup, we'll take her." Shortly after, you met your husband, Sean Penn. You co-starred in "State of Grace" in 1989, and he asked you out. Actually, he told me to meet him at his hotel suite, and I sat there waiting. Eventually, he came out of the bedroom to greet me wearing a bolo tie, cowboy boots, a jock strap and a pith helmet. I started laughing hysterically. I said: "Oh, good. You're ready. Let's go." He must have appreciated your sense of humor. I guess. We're both very stubborn. For years, I felt that people were more interested in me as Sean Penn's wife than as a person in my own right. I love my husband, but I wanted to have my own identity. I think your reserve, your reluctance to make mainstream films and your blondness have led the studios to see you as icy and somewhat disdainful. I know — they never see me as funny. They think of me as a tragic heroine or, maybe, a hormonal mother.

But I'm ready to not be so sad. I hate the idea that I'm glorifying sadness by portraying sad characters in films. It's what I resort to because, in a way, it's home. But I don't want to be that person anymore: it's too familiar. Do you feel that independent films tend to stress darkness over light, whereas studio films tend toward happy endings? I don't think about the work that way. It's the same with money: I never think about the budget of the film or what I'll be paid until I can't pay the water bill. Actually, it doesn't really matter because I no longer get offered big films. There was a time when I said no a lot, but I have no regrets: the happiest moments in my life were when I had my kids. That made a lot of decisions easy — any sort of movie role that I passed up is tiny in comparison. Do you worry about Hollywood's tendency to shun actresses once they are past the so-called childbearing years, which they seem to think is around 35? No. I think I have a couple of good years left. I say a couple of years because I won't get Botox or a face-lift. I hate all the surgery. We're conditioning society to think that aging is abnormal. I like my lines — I've earned them. You're currently directing a documentary about women surfers. Are you interested in shifting professions? Not really. I love to act. I'm about to turn 41, and I think I'm having a rebirth. I realize that acting has great meaning to me now in a way that it didn't when I was younger. So, I'm ready to work. I have other skills: I could sell real estate, I can knit, and I'm great at organizing a car pool. But I think I can act. That would be my choice.

Published: February 25, 2007