Bobby Coleman and Minnie Driver in Take Courtesy of Liberation Entertainment

A lot of times we hear from actresses that once they've had kids it changes their whole perspective, and they don't care as much about what they're doing. Do you think that may be the case for you?
Well, I'm sure that's the case. You hope it would be. You hope [the reaction] wouldn't be, "Well, I've had my kids, and they were grotesque, and I wanted to go and do another huge movie!" You hope it would be the other way around. Yeah, sure, but it's really a matter of your life being bigger than what you do for a living. And that's always what saves people in Hollywood, anyway. It is the realization that your life is so much more, even though it seems like celebrity, friends, and success would be the things that would be super important. Actually, it's a wonderful thing I do for a living. It definitely has its place. [But] my life... is big and broad, and I'm interested in a lot of different things.

After your baby is born, how do you think that's going to affect a lot of things you've been doing that require a rigorous schedule, such as shooting The Riches and going on tour?
Yeah, you just have to have help. You really do. I need to have somebody with me who can help me, whether it's a family member, whether it's my mom or whether it's a nanny — someone who is there. I've got to go work. But that baby will be with me.

You could have found out the sex of your child if you wanted to. Why did you decide you wanted to be surprised?
Because I'm old fashioned. I don't know, for thousands of years [women did not find] out. I couldn't base something as auspicious and beautiful as that on home decor. I want that beautiful moment. My friend texted me the sex of her baby, and I was standing on the corner of some crappy street and some other crappy street, and I was like, "This is not how I want to find out!" It doesn't appeal to me.

What do you crave? What foods are you now addicted to?
It'll be a huge shock to you. I'm addicted to green. I'm not [differentiating between] anything that's green, from Jell-O to cucumber to lime sorbet. All the stuff that is really sharp and crunchy. It's really weird: the most bizarre things. Green apples are probably the highest priority on my list. I have a refrigerator full of them.

Can you talk about your work with Oxfam and the world food crisis? What can people do at an individual level?
Be sustainable. That's the only thing that you can say. If you really want to get, like, rootsy about it, then what are you going to do? You start composting, you start growing, you create your garden, you get rid of all your fancy lawns, and you top over your swimming pool. And you start growing your own food. And you buy locally. You support local farmers. It's hard. It's tough to see ballasts like rice and sugar going up in price.

You've done a lot of voice work, and you were supposed to be in The Simpsons movie. What happened?
Yeah, I guess the movie was just too long and they had to cut something. [In my scene,] the whole of Springfield is going to die, and I was the grievance counselor. I was like a really smug English grievance counselor who said all the wrong things to everybody. It was one of the funniest afternoons I've ever had, hanging out with Matt Groening.

Will The Riches come back?
I would be so pissed if it doesn't. It's one thing to be in a really crap show and to get canceled, [but it's another thing] to be in a show that is genuinely good with amazing people, that has had wonderful reviews. I've got more nominations for the show than [anything else], but we're not dead yet. I think this year is an anomalous year. The strike screwed everything. It's not subscription-driven, [so] we have to have bigger numbers than shows like Weeds and Mad Men, which we do. But you know what? It's cool.

You're filming Motherhood with Uma Thurman now. How is that going?
It's good. Low-budget movies are hard, but Katherine Dieckmann is a wonderful director and a great writer. It's definitely hard working at seven months [pregnant] and in this heat and stuff. You definitely get super tired. And she's been super cool.

Can you talk about Ripple Effect?
It is with Virginia Madsen and Forest Whitaker. And every single word of that movie is improvised. This isn't like doing a Waiting for Guffman where you've rehearsed for weeks and you get a script. This was literally show up on the day and be like, "OK, so in this scene you're in bed with Forest and you've just got to end up outside the house. Go!" We talked a little more than that but it was a really cool weird acting experiment. That's why I did it.

What about your role as executive producer?
That's purely nominal. I did nothing to kind of get that. I did nothing to get this film made except be in it and to lend my name and talk about it and support Philippe [Caland, the director, writer, and star], who is a really wonderful man.

When you do a movie like Take, which is kind of downbeat and tough, do you ever say to yourself, "Well, who's going to go see this movie?"
Absolutely. I've had a weird and beautiful career. There's a ton of movies, which will remain nameless, that I could have done because I knew that they were going to have the biggest opening weekends and they would do the big thing. But in terms of, if you're going to live your life as an artist and really live by that and stand by that, you're going to make movies that maybe five people will see, but those five people will be genuinely moved and love it. And I did this because it was a wonderful character and I'm an actress. I don't need to be looking hot and cute in every movie and eventually just move right into the plastic surgery that maintains that for another couple years and then be really sad in a reality show. That's not the idea I have for my career. I want to work. I want to be Julie Christie. I want to be Helen Mirren. I want to keep making good, interesting stuff.