Madeleine Stowe

"While I didnt know it at the time, Daniel had suggested to Michael that I play Cora before we had ever met. And prior to our meeting, I was at a restaurant with John Bailey, the director, when I felt this man looking over in our direction and smiling a good deal. I realized, after leaving, that it was Daniel. He later told me that he was having lunch with Michael and had coincidentally asked him earlier that very day about me. Its just a funny thing, isnt it? And I was terribly flattered when he told me this tale. He was also very clear that the decision to cast me as Cora was all Michaels."

"In the 90s action pictures were all the rage. As a woman, I was fed up with them and I initially thought that the script was just another action film dressed up as a period piece. When Michael began speaking about the characters inner life, it was clear that his own inner life was strong, as well. I then saw Cora in a completely different light because of Michaels orientation. It became easy to personalize her."

"I feel like everything I tried to do is in there."

"Id just love to see a great love story, and nobody makes them anymore. You have great actresses like Cate Blanchett — shes fabulous in Pushing Tin and Elizabeth — and you dont use them."

"The moment with Hawkeye is all about mutual attraction, expressed without filter from him, and a surrendering of social guardedness from Cora. She accepts his directness as her own."

"When I said, "I feel like everything I tried to do is there", it is less because of what I did than it is a case of Michael keeping his word. Sometimes hed launch into a discourse, a convoluted discourse about something or other, and I had no idea what he was saying. Id tease him about it, "What on earth are you talking about?"