"My goal is that a girl will watch 'The Martian' or 'Interstellar' and think, 'I want to be an astron..." — Jessica Chastain

What's wrong with trying hard and showing up and being good at your job? We really need to look at ourselves and say we need to reevaluate this. We need to reevaluate that women who ask for a pay raise or ask for a promotion - it's actually an okay thing. It's okay to be ambitious; it's okay to be over-prepared.

Only a woman can tell you what it's like to be a woman in a society where men are in charge. When you have one demographic that controls the livelihood of minorities, then you're always going to have abuses of power. So this goes way beyond Hollywood.

I went to public school, and I didn't do well in school. And it wasn't until, actually, I got into school at Juilliard - it was the first time in my life that I thought, 'Oh, maybe I'm not stupid,' because I was so inspired and passionate about what I was learning, and it was the first time in my life I had felt that.

Being a woman has always been a powerful thing, where history has sometimes dictated otherwise, but I believe that a woman can be compassionate, sensitive, soft, kind.