I wanted to get everything right. I was super nerdy and academic. I got so much satisfaction out of getting good grades.
Going to set, every day, and working with the incredible actors I get to work with is fulfilling. I’ve been doing this since I was nine years old, so it’s always been something that I’ve been passionate about. It’s always fed me.
My brothers and I always did improv stuff in our basement with our friends; we’re super nerds, and that was our way of spending a Friday night.
My mom taught me German before I knew English. And I went to French immersion school.
Those darker sides, the things that we don’t want to admit about ourselves – that’s what excites me.
Trust your gut. You know yourself, so don’t let somebody else tell you who you are.
You’re hot for two seconds, and you’re struggling to get work again. If it were easy, I don’t think that’s a good place for an artist to work from.
As an actor, you’re listening to the other person and always trying to be present and take everything they’re giving you, but when they’re not there, you have to produce that yourself.
Auditions are not a natural environment, and you feel judged, even though everyone is just excited to find the right person.
So much of how you look at yourself in the mirror reflects how you feel about yourself, and how you comport yourself.
I love nerdy work. I love writing notes. I try to go back, as much as I can, to feed what happens and why they do what they do.
Just to be on set with Amy Poehler, who’s one of my heroes, was a total dream come true.
For me, comedians are like the epitome for everything great, and they terrify me. I just want to be them. I want to be like them.
You learn from the actors that you’re working with.
I’m excited to work on something where I have a bit more time with it, to explore one personality. That’s definitely exciting to me.
I have trouble sleeping, at the end of the night. There’s a lot of stimulus and my brain is processing a lot of different arcs and personalities. I’m always processing things, so I don’t sleep.
I’m an actor and I like having attention. There’s a reason I like being on stage and in front of the camera, and it’s that interaction.
Young women are now looking at me for cues. That’s definitely been a responsibility. But I feel like I was ready to take on something like this because I wanted to be challenged and I wanted to be afraid, and that’s definitely what it’s done for me.
Dance has always been a really important thing for me, so being able to physically express the characters through music and dance is like another layer to things.
You’re revealing something about yourself in a more exaggerated, more fleshed-out way, and it awakens something in you that maybe you didn’t know you had.
I would love to work with Gena Rowlands. I just don’t know in what capacity. I’d play her daughter or granddaughter, or whatever. I would just love to work with her, in whatever capacity.