I get really excited about jewelry.

Cause it's really hard, it's hard to be an actor.

I'm not one to air my dirty laundry for the whole world.

I don't have any type of sketch-comedy or stand-up background.

Yeah, you know I don't ever see myself doing a super-gritty, hard-core drama.

I still get nervous when I have a lot of makeup on, a big hairdo, and a dress.

I went to a little liberal-arts college in Missouri called Truman State University.

Tilda Swinton is a great example of a person who completely disappears into a role.

Even in college I tended to get cast in the comedies more. It was what I liked doing.

I didn't want to go to college. I wanted to move to Los Angeles right out of high school.

I'm a believer in the parent first, friend second philosophy, and trying to find that balance.

I also love horror movies; I like me a big Peter Berg action movie. I'm a movie lover in general.

I spent my whole adolescence, when you just want to be accepted, looking much younger than everyone else.

As the lead of a movie, you really set the tone off-camera as well, and that's a really big responsibility.

When I'm writing my blog, I think of myself at 13 years old, back in St. Louis, daydreaming about Hollywood.

Well, I knew I wanted to be an actor, and I didn't necessarily need or want to be famous or a celebrity actor.

Sometimes doing a movie for a short period of time is better than committing eight months to a television show.

The Farrelly brothers make movies the way you imagine a movie set would be when you're a kid - fun all the time.

I'm not prepared for a zombie apocalypse. I need more bottled water, a shotgun, and stronger abs. I have plenty of canner food.

I don't have real big aspirations to be a movie star. I would love to be on a long-running hit TV show. You end up playing a defining role.

I'd been out in Los Angeles for about eight years, knocking around. I actually, instead of waiting tables, worked in offices as a temporary assistant.

Sometimes acting is really cool because it forces you to exercise certain muscles in your personality that you wouldn't normally be called upon in life.

My cat, Andy, has been my best buddy since I was 18, and he doesn't care if I'm on a TV show or if I'm red-carpet ready. He just likes it when I'm there.

It is part of me; I could definitely be that if I wanted to, I just choose not to. I mean, I am an actress at my core, and I think we're all a little crazy.

I know so many amazing actors who don't get work... and then there are a bunch of real duds that work all the time. The industry is just not fair in that way.

I studied theater in college, and I really wanted to be an actress and play a lot of different roles. Then I made landing on a television comedy my main focus.

The fun is getting to wear multiple disguises and getting to explore multiple personalities and bring them to life. So a movie career definitely affords me that.

I'm a lover of lists and five-year plans and Excel spreadsheets. Any way that I can have any control over the direction my life is going, I gravitate towards that.

I'm very deliberate and I love Excel spreadsheets and I love five-year plans and all that. So it felt really fun to play someone so incredibly different from myself.

I had this crazy job, though, when I first got to Los Angeles... I answered this ad in the back of the newspaper to be a telephone psychic, and I did that for two days.

It makes it really hard to just go to a dinner party because, in my work life, I'm surrounded by the funniest people, ever. I'm really spoiled. I laugh a lot, in my day.

Growing up, I was a very shy, wallflower type. I was not a nerd, but not popular. I was just invisible, like that person you probably didn't know you were in school with.

Be willing to work for nothing in things you think are stupid. Make work for yourself. Make your own luck. Don't complain. Hopefully, the work will find you if you are ready.

With "The Office," they said, "We don't want anyone we recognize, so give us unknown actors," and I think that was the break that I needed. Because I went in and I got the role.

There's a part of me that wishes I had gone to school and gotten a business degree, because I almost wonder if that wouldn't be more helpful than my theater degree, in some ways.

I'm a very thoughtful, forward-thinking, planner kind of person. I love Excel spreadsheets and five-year-plans, and I love to review every year how my New Year's resolutions went.

I've had Susan Sarandon play my mom, and now Lesley Ann Warren has played my mom, so if I could have Debra Winger play my mom, then I would have the trifecta of my favorite actresses playing my mother.

I think that there is a tragic misfit at the core of me, and I've just done a lot of work on myself. I love a good self-help book; I've read a ton of them. I love self-help seminars and therapy and all that.

I loved the domesticity of my life as a struggling actor. When I wasn't going to auditions, I could do things like cook dishes from scratch and take them to parties or be really thoughtful about birthdays and anniversaries.

Well, now that I have a baby, I'm that person who's looking for all the parks. I'm also the person who lost their coat because I was juggling so many items. So I'm that person: I lost my coat, I lost my scarf, and it's cold now.

I studied theater in college, and I really wanted to be an actress and play a lot of different roles. Then I made landing on a television comedy my main focus. But when you become an actress, you want to play a variety of things.

I was definitely raised this way. My folks are very grounded, normal people, and I wasn't raised in the entertainment industry. I just grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, in a very normal family. I wasn't a child actor or anything like that.

I think we all spend, sometimes, more time at our jobs than we do at home, and there are people that we wouldn't necessarily choose to spend so much time with. So those irritations and those, just those situations I think are really relatable.

I always worry that people are going to be very confused; sometimes timelines get confused with how movies get made. So when I say, "Oh, I made this movie when I was going through a divorce," people think, "Oh no! She's pregnant with a child and divorced?"

I've been really lucky. I didn't have any morning sickness and I've been off work for most of my pregnancy, so I've been able to do things like work out with a trainer and do prenatal yoga and all these things that have kept my body very agile and pain-free.

I don't know if this is true of everyone, but I have this relationship with my parents where, despite however mature or articulate or grown-up I think I've become, as soon as I go home, I turn into this petulant 13-year-old, especially with the tone of my voice.

Well, I don't know if this is true of everyone, but I have this relationship with my parents where, despite however mature or articulate or grown-up I think I've become, as soon as I go home, I turn into this petulant 13-year-old, especially with the tone of my voice.

That character in Solitary Man is probably most like me in real life: a solid person who has a good head on her shoulders and is very driven and practical, and not afraid to set boundaries. That's sort of my center. I come from the same place as the character in Solitary Man.

I got divorced, after having been married for almost eight years. That is a very life-altering experience. There's a period of time that you go through, where you're having to adjust to knowing yourself and knowing who you are from being a couple to being an individual again.

You never go into a marriage expecting to get divorced. You go into a marriage expecting it's going to last forever, and you have a lot of ways you dream about the future. You have all these expectations, and then you have to adjust those expectations, and it can be a very unnerving, confusing time.

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