I grew up in Louisiana, and my mother's family is hugely political, not wealthy but with this great sense of social responsibility. My mother is the councilwoman for the French Quarter in New Orleans. A lot of the books I'm drawn to are political in their own way, not in terms of left or right but in social issues.

I first read All the King's Men , Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, when I was in college. It's about Willie Stark, a complicated populist Louisiana governor not unlike Huey Long. For all his faults, he's a hero who gives these inspiring speeches: "Listen to me, you hicks. Yeah, you're hicks, too, and they've fooled you, too…. Well, this time I'm going to fool somebody." I remember falling in love with the way the narrator, Jack Burden, is a beautiful blend of upper and lower classes, which I knew well, coming from New Orleans, and how he found his soul and himself elsewhere.

Then I was cast in the film, and suddenly these characters I've known all my life are there in the flesh. Jude Law was Jack Burden, Stark's right-hand man. And I was Sadie, Stark's secretary. It was disconcerting at first, but it made me long for a great populist politician. I remember thinking, Where are the Willie Starks today?

(Editor's note: Clarkson spoke to us before Hurricane Katrina.)

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