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Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Elisabeth Shue to this program. The Oscar-nominated actress has starred in a number of notable films, including, of course, "Leaving Las Vegas," "Deconstructing Harry," and "City of Angels." Her latest project is called "Gracie" and is based on real-life events from her own childhood. That film opens around the country on June 1st. Here now, a scene from "Gracie."

[Clip]

Tavis: Nice to have you on the program.

Elisabeth Shue: Thank you, thanks for having me.

Tavis: I'll let you tell the story of Gracie and the parts that are autobiographical and the parts that are not.

Shue: (Laughter) Well, it's about a 15-year-old girl who in the late '70s, there were no girls' soccer teams, if you can believe that. And she loses her oldest brother in a terrible accident and so she decides to honor him to take his place on the boy's varsity soccer team. And so it's her struggle to get her father to see her as an equal and to reach this dream that she's always had to be a great athlete at a time where girls really weren't taken seriously.

Tavis: And this dovetails with your life in what ways?

Shue: Well, I played soccer on all-boys' teams for about four years, I did lose my oldest bother, and I did fight to get my father to see me as an equal athlete to my brothers. And that was sort of the theme of my life, and that's very much the theme of "Gracie."

Tavis: You grew up where, in New Jersey?

Shue: Yeah, South Orange.

Tavis: Tell me how you fell in love with soccer back then, 'cause the point you make a moment ago, it's hard to imagine now that soccer wasn't as rampant, wasn't as big then as it is now. But how in New Jersey did you become a soccer fan back in the '70s?

Shue: My father. My father was a soccer star. We all wore the number seven. I had three brothers, we played soccer since I was five on the side yard, and it was just the game of our family. So when I started playing with boys, it didn't feel different. I just felt like the team was bigger but it was still boys, and that's where I belonged. I really didn't even know if I could play with girls, to be honest.

Tavis: What was the challenge, though? Since on the one hand you felt like you belonged, but there had to be a challenge being the only girl out there, which was what?

Shue: Yeah. There was a great deal of loneliness and fear and nervousness. Every time I would show up on the field I would get so nervous I could barely breathe. And it was just because I knew I had to live up to so much and I never wanted guys to look at me and say, "She was a good athlete because she's a girl." "She's good for a girl?" Never. So I worked so hard to never have that happen.

Tavis: Now, your brother, Andrew, who we all know is a fine actor, played soccer professionally for a minute?

Shue: Yeah, he played on the Galaxy for about two years.

Tavis: The L.A. Galaxy, yeah. And speaking of your brother Andrew, is this movie like a family affair or what?

Shue: Yeah, I know, it's kind of crazy. My husband, Davis Guggenheim, directed it. Andrew produced it; he raised all of the money. My brother John helped us with the financing. So yeah, it was crazy that we could all do it together. A lot of fighting. (Laughter)

Tavis: You got the project done, thought.

Shue: Yeah. We call it creative conflict.

Tavis: Creative conflict. (Laughter) What do you make, then - let's fast-forward now - what do you make, then, of the fact that soccer is, on the one hand - it's an interesting dichotomy for me. On the one hand, there is soccer everywhere in the United States, and yet while soccer is everywhere it is, at the same time, nowhere. That is to say, everybody has a kid who plays soccer and yet soccer has not taken hold here in America the way it has around the rest of the world.

Shue: I would like to think that that's changing. I think Beckham coming is a good sign, and I think that hopefully our culture will change. That they will understand that it's not all about goal scoring. It's actually about the process of setting up a goal and the beauty of a game and watching that process. I think we're all obsessed with, like, how many goals did you score and that quick fix.

Tavis: I was going to say, that's part of what the problem is for people who don't really dig soccer. Sometimes it can take forever to see a goal.

Shue: Yes, that's good, though.

Tavis: Well, that's not good.

Shue: That's good, yes.

Tavis: No, it's not good. You want to see the payoff, you want to see some scores, you want some points on the board.

Shue: Yeah, but the joy of the goal, one goal - it's like ecstasy. You have to wait and wait and wait and then it's, like, oh.

Tavis: Yeah. (Laughter) Let me just dig a little bit more on this psychologically, or philosophically. So why is it, then - philosophically, you think - that the rest of the world gets it and their patience allows them to celebrate and we Americans don't get it? What's the disconnect here?

Shue: They're more evolved.

Tavis: More evolved than we are.

Shue: Yes. They're probably better in bed.

Tavis: Yeah. Oh. (Laughter) But you married an American.

Shue: I did.

Tavis: Yeah (laughs).

Shue: But he gets it.

Tavis: But he gets it, though, okay. (Laughter) I don't know where I'm supposed to go with that in the next seven minutes. Was it just me or did you decide to, like, step away from acting for a while? Or did I just, like, not see you in anything?

Shue: I did step aside for a little while. I have three children, so that does take time, having children. But it's also tough. You just sort of go through a lot of ups and downs in this business that you really can't control. So sometimes when you're on the down slope you don't see us for a while.

Tavis: How do you navigate - and I'm always fascinated with every person who has to navigate that, because pretty much everybody in this business has to, no matter how big a star you are. There will come a time when you have some down time. How do you navigate the down time?

Shue: I have an amazing family and I really like my life outside of this business. And I've never, ever defined myself based on my success or failure, and I think that's what sort of keeps me going and you just can't quit. You have to - there's a certain fight that you have to have inside. A knowingness that your time will come.

Tavis: And having these three kids has changed your perspective on the business in what way, if any?

Shue: Well, I just don't care about it as much. I actually, when I had my third child, I was about to do a film that was kind of a big film and I thought to myself, I thought okay, at the end of my life I'm going to have videos that'll be stacked up on the shelf, or I'm going to have three children that will be by my bed when I die.

And that choice was so easy when I thought about each film. It's an amazing experience, but it ends up just being a video, in the end. So you have to keep choosing things in your life that will be with you forever. Your work is your work.

Tavis: And to the folk who say that it's not an either/or, it can be a both/and, that you can have it all?

Shue: I have it all, because I have the balance that I need for my own life. But I can't imagine, like, an amazing career where I'm working back to back to back to back. I would suffer. My family would suffer and I wouldn't be happy.

Tavis: Your husband - I think I got this correct - was on the team that won the Academy Award for "An Inconvenient Truth."

Shue: Yeah, he was the director.

Tavis: He was director of the project.

Shue: Yeah.

Tavis: That's more than being on the team.

Shue: Yeah, he was the man. (Laughter)

Tavis: That's more than being on the team, he was the director. So he directed this piece. So must be a lot of environmental talk around your house these days?

Shue: Yeah, we have solar panels, actually. (Laughter) Do you know that before we directed that movie, he had a Chevy Tahoe?

Tavis: Your husband did?

Shue: Yes, he did.

Tavis: And now he's driving what?

Shue: And now he's driving a Prius.

Tavis: Somehow I knew the word Prius was about to come out.

Shue: I know.

Tavis: That was pretty remarkable, though.

Shue: Yeah, amazing.

Tavis: That Al Gore thing just really -

Shue: Yeah. It was a beautiful, beautiful experience to see that movie take off and to see its impact on the world.

Tavis: Was that your husband's first time being involved in a documentary project?

Shue: No, he had done some documentaries in the past but the first one that really had a huge impact.

Tavis: Tell me how the two of you keep - I'm always fascinated by people who are both in the business, because to your earlier point about these up periods and these down periods, you never know when it's going to hit for one person or the other and we read all the time about these marriages that don't survive.

It's difficult enough being married as it is, but when you're in a business where you both may not be working at the same time or for that matter working at the same time and both away from the kids, how do you make the relationship thing work?

Shue: Well, I think it's easier when you're not so successful. I think that it's actually more difficult now, I can see even in his life, because he has so many people wanting him to do more and more work and he has to keep saying no and he has to keep allocating his time and choosing his family as a priority.

But I think also it's that respect that you have for each other and the companionship of when I'm going through a tough time he helps bring me back and say, "Look, it's about the work, it's about the work. You're going to be okay." And then when he's going through tough times I help him realign himself.

And I feel like that partnership is what keeps us sort of moving forward and not letting our focus care about how are we doing and where are we in this business, how is our career doing? It's so meaningless.

Tavis: Let me circle back to this film. Is there a message here that we're trying to give to young girls, or for that matter, young boys?

Shue: Never give up. Ever. You have to keep fighting every day. And it's a struggle, and you have to bless the struggle and bring it on. And I think that young girls, they're very vulnerable to caring what other people think. Caring about their bodies, caring about their self-worth in a way that is not positive. And I think sports really help focus them to find their self-worth through meaningful, meaningful things and not - as I know, because I did it - acting out to try to get self-worth through whether guys like you or whether friends like you. Just sticking to your goal and staying focused.

Tavis: The irony of this, as I sit and listen to you talk about the fact that women can find some self-worth in sports, the irony of that is - actually two ironies. Number one, I literally was just in New Jersey last week, I gave the commencement speech at Rutgers.

Shue: Really?

Tavis: I'd been asked to do it long before the Imus situation erupted, but certainly when you stand up to give the commencement with this Imus backdrop it's impossible to give a speech - at least it was for me - and to not reference that. Not reference the grace and dignity that these women on the Rutgers basketball team displayed in light of what Imus had to say about them.

That's one irony, I think. The other irony is that when you talk about women finding self-worth through sports, we still live in a world where women just don't get the respect in sports that men do. Not the respect, not the money, not the coverage. C. Vivian Stringer, the Rutgers coach, had to fight for all these years just to now get a respectable salary, commensurate, comparable to what the other men on campus are getting.

So I'm not so sure - I hear the point you're trying to make, but I'm not sure I buy that completely, that women can find the kind of self-worth in sports that they deserve.

Shue: Oh, yeah, they can. (Laughs) And I also think that it's not necessarily - you don't necessarily have to be a professional athlete. I'm playing a lot of tennis right now and I really want to beat my brother Andrew at tennis. (Laughter) And it is going to be so satisfying, because he is going down. He will lose, and it's because I've worked so hard.

And I think there are certain sports where women, no matter whether they're a girl or not, if you work hard, you will be better than a guy at that sport. You might not be at the top, you might not be able to play Federer and beat him. But there are some satisfying victories out there for all of us.

Tavis: I'm out of time, but I can assure you I'm making a copy of this show and I'm sending a copy of this tape to Andrew Shue. I want him to not hear it through the grapevine but to see what his sister had to say about him on national television. The movie starring his sister and him and her husband directing is called "Gracie." Elisabeth, nice to have you on the program.

Shue: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Tavis: My pleasure.