Then, she tells Harper's, what she'd really like to do is work on her "labor of love," Goree Girls, which is the story of a 1940s female country band that started in prison. "Yep. I can carry a tune, and I was known to throw out a jazz hand from time to time in high school," she says.

She doesn't go into much about her personal life in the Harper's piece, but she does say that she has developed a thick skin over the years. "I used to care a hell of a lot more about what people said or thought," she says of the time after her split from ex-husband Brad Pitt in 2005. "But that had to change when my life was under a microscope being scrutinized and my personal life was being talked about."

She says time away from the spotlight was not such a bad thing. It allowed her to refocus. "It feels so good to not just act, you know?"

But she is grateful for her professional life, as she reveals when she offers advice to young celebrity upstarts. "You have to remember that we're the luckiest people in the world to do what we get to do and get paid for it."