I've gotten to portray things in [Christopher Guest's] movies that I wouldn't have in others.
I liked being able to portray a woman at this particular age and at this point in her life.
I utilize myself a lot more fully now. You get older so you have a lot more experience.
People are like, 'Was it fun? Did you eat lots of cake?'
I don't want to sound like too much of a drama queen! But I'm not going to tell you, 'Oh, it's just so much fun.' It's work [working on film].
As an actor in these movies you get to fill up something so much, to its capacity, and once you get there you're like a horse running onto the racetrack.
Sometimes you're not in the best environment. Sometimes you're not speaking the same language and it's not a good place to work. It's a lot to give, actually. And for not a lot of money.
I sold my apartment this year. It's like, Wow, this is where the arts are now.
Time is weird in your twenties. It's intense, and you feel like it's running out. But you'll get to thirty and see you are still here on the planet.
Early on it was much easier to play leads, but now independent movies are being co-opted by the studio system, and they want bigger names to guarantee more audience and more numbers.
I think Jesse Eisenberg is such a great writer. He was a great director and really tough.
I don't know what's going on with new media and digital stuff. It's all changing.
You're talking to someone, to a reader, and you get to express in the way you want to. And you get to play with it. It's kind of like acting, but it's on paper.
I think movies are now like going to a museum and seeing the latest exhibit - people just aren't going. It really is a dying art form. It feels frustrating.
Pop songs now, they're about the aftermath of love.
You know, it's a really adult thing, for some people, to choose to not be with the one that you love.
I've done a lot of crafts in my day. I learned how to do pottery, yoga... and I just wanted to share and talk and write.
My dad recently reminded me that my grandfather's cousin was Lefty Frizzell.
But it's fun to be something, have that, and you don't have to be real. It's like, comedians. They go on and they're doing all these jokes. I would be like that if I were more awake
I like soap opera acting. If it's done really well, there's nothing better. It's old school. It's like what those melodramas in the '30s and '40s were like
I'm having too good of a time.
It felt really good to kind of find my voice and say stuff, and to be funny, hopefully.
I'm the character actor in Hollywood movies, the girl who has to be annoying so the guy can go to the other girl.
I'm trying to work in studio movies, but they won't hire me.
I don't Twitter, although sometimes I think that I should.
I haven't seen a bear in person. I've seen deer. I have lots of woodchucks on my property. And bluebirds. Foxes.
I usually play character parts in Hollywood films.
My grandmother is this amazingly theatrical woman. She acted like a movie star, as far as looks and attitude, kind of like Susan Hayward.
My first lead role was probably 'Party Girl' in 1994.
It's overshadowed, the art. We're in a really argumentative, black-and-white-thinking culture right now. There's not a lot of time to take things in.
I watch soap operas. I bake brownies. Normalcy is coursing through my veins.
I wouldn't say I was a queen. Maybe a little elf
An actor's career relies on a lot of luck. Being in the right place at the right time.
In the '90s, indie movies could get financing, because financers gave money straight to directors... Now it's a different system. Indie movies got co-opted by the studio system.
I don't have a publisher yet, so I'm not in the process of that next stage and I don't know what that's going to look like. So I feel like I finished stage one [with my book].
I like bears. I like bear people. I like bear-type men.
I would like a nice, powerful, mind-altering substance. Preferably one that will make my unborn children grow gills.
Black eyeliner says 'You've been through stuff, you know things'.
There are all these scripts where the women, if they're working, are prostitutes and lawyers with an angry streak who'll kill you. It's a reaction to women leaving their men and men being angry about it and saying it on some subconscious level
I don't, really a fashionable person. I'm an actor, so I like costumes. But fashion is very popular now. Really overly popular. It's like New Age music in the '80s, or art. And then independent film. Now everyone's a fashion designer. It's had a big effect in New York, in our culture.
Chris Guest has his own form. It's a way of working that is really intense and you can commit a lot and you focus a lot. You get to bring a lot. You get to bring things maybe you haven't seen before. You're asked to care a great deal for these people who you're playing and create heart and empathy.
I can do comedy, so people want me to do that, but the other side of comedy is depression. Deep, deep depression is the flip side of comedy. Casting agents don't realize it but in order to be funny you have to have that other side.
The studios insisted that only stars could make movies successful. And that was the real disappointment of the time. You'd see great writer-directors in the '90s becoming part of a system where financiers and movie stars could change the material. I came along just before all that happened.
I'm a grown-up and I'm a creative person so I should try to give something to that and see what I can make with that. And not sit around listening to people be like, 'You really should be on an HBO show. You'd be great on an Amazon series.' You're like, 'Thank you, okay. I don't have any offers.'
I did do a presentation pilot with Jesse Eisenberg and he's wonderful. He's such a great writer. He directed me and he wrote these wonderful scripts and we're waiting to hear if marketers and advertisers think that an audience wants to look at a bad mom and her 10-year-old son in a show.
I ran to Rachel [Comey]'s show and on the way I found a potted tree - an umbrella tree - on the street. I always think things are going to be way more intimate than they are and there aren't going to be a lot of people around. I don't know why I think this. I'm always shocked at what a hoopla things are. They were like, 'Hurry up.' So I put the tree down and I see Rachel and she's like, 'Hurry up, sit down.'
You're making a fantasy. You're making something real out of a fantasy. And then it no longer exists. It's heartbreaking to leave behind. I was devastated after Waiting for Guffman. I had never gotten so close to people I've worked with.
With Dazed and Confused I got the high school experience I didn't get to have. So you do create families and homes. You're projecting and it's your job. The amount of time and headspace and thought it takes on your psyche is huge. It's exhausting, yeah. And it's exhausting but it's also great.
I was around New York at a time when independent cinema was at its peak and became kind of popular and mainstream. It got some hype, culturally. After that, studios started to have independent companies within their studio system, and they found bigger stars willing to do new material. That's kind of what it's turned into.
