I love to be by the ocean and have always done my best thinking by the sea. The ebb and flow is like a brain massage and very calming. I am also inspired by seeing kindness in others. It touches me and reminds me to be kind as well.

With 'Honeymoon,' it was so intimate, and we literally shot it in something like 20, 24 days. Everything was very rapid and very fast, and so all of us submerged into the deep end and only really came up for air once we had wrapped.

When people are like, 'Life is good,' I go, 'No, life is a series of disastrous moments, painful moments, unexpected moments, and things that will break your heart. And in between those moments, that's when you savor, savor, savor.'

I had a home birth because I really believe in the body's natural ability to give birth. The medical profession has kind of warped women's minds into thinking we don't know how to birth and we need doctors and epidurals and Pitocin.

If you open up a magazine and there's a photograph of you with a giant red circle around your thigh, like, look at this cellulite, any person - I don't care what you do - would be mortified. It's no wonder people get crazy about it.

I don't really want to be fat, so I stop before I am. I'm not a vegetarian, but I might go through a phase when I'm not interested in eating protein for a week or so, and then I might go through a phase when I eat nothing but steak.

I wake up very early every morning and I have my coffee at 6:30. If it comes at 6:35, I'm very upset. I don't say anything but I'm upset because I'm so punctual in doing things, that if I lose five minutes I have to rush everything.

I once went to a fraternity house when I was in high school... you know, you would rent them during the summer for really cheap, and students are in there. So I met some people who rented a room. I just remember it being very dirty.

The amount of coordination it takes to shoot a television show is mind-numbing. There are so many things that have to be exactly right to create the correct environment for a single shot, let alone a whole scene or the full episode.

I think that so many actors are defined by the first thing that people see them do, and there were people who simply couldn't accept the fact that I was doing something that they perceived as being a radical departure from Avenue Q.

The directors I consider really great have the ability to recognize when something's going in an unexpected direction and see it as a bonus and be able to go with it, as opposed to locking down what they thought was going to happen.

I'm not being cynical, but I have to find work that is allowing me to pay bills and keep our lives going in a way that we're used to and trying not to betray my political beliefs while I'm doing it. Listen, it's a tough thing to do.

If you feel like you can't throw a party, just put a timeline together. There are always little things you can do ahead of time - like washing and pressing linens and bringing out your tableware. Check them off as you complete them.

This film [Teknolust] in particular, showing the way in which having a sexual dialogue with someone can be something developing and changeable and maybe uncomfortable and complicated. Just complicated and human, no more and no less.

Sometime in my second year at Brown [University], I took an acting class. And the lightbulb went off for me. I fell in love with it. I realized that everything I was afraid of about myself, all my fears, could be used in that world.

Red carpet is a little bit scary. It's not about expression. It's about taking a pretty picture in a really weird, awkward way, with so many people watching. It's a glamorous part of the job, but it requires its own kind of courage.

My fiance and I had a few problems working through some of the things that he saw me say and do on the 'Surreal Life.' Considering the company that I was in, Ron Jeremy and Trishelle from 'The Real World,' I think I was pretty tame.

I'm not a writer, but I'm very good at editing. That's my specialty. I can read something and tell you everything that's wrong with it and what's great about it and what needs to change, but it's hard for me to organize my thoughts.

When I go home, I am a slug. I want to do everything completely opposite of what I do on the red carpet. I like to take off all my makeup, put on a t-shirt, be completely unassuming and just do stuff with my husband and my daughter.

I have a lot of spiritual books that I read that I really, really love - everything from the Bible to Joseph Campbell, who I love. He wrote The Hero of a Thousand Faces. It's about exploring what is heroic in you. It helps me a lot.

That's one of the most exciting things for me about listening to records: It's a moment in time, and the less it's messed with the more powerful it is. I wanted at least one song on the record to be just completely about the moment.

It's great, because we've had some really great people playing with us who really have studied the record and been able to recreate a lot of what was done. But I would need a choir of eight, probably, to do all of the backup vocals.

For me, it's owning the fact that I have a sensitive disposition along with a rampant imagination that makes up stories and convinces me they're true. I feel things intensely, and that sometimes brings me on wave of profound sorrow.

TV is such a great medium in what it can do in terms of enlightening an audience. We can really inspire and teach people about other people. That's a powerful tool, and that's something that the arts has always been capable of doing.

I lived on my own when I was living in New York City when I was 18, working on a show. And that definitely kind of grows you up a little faster than a normal 18-year-old in college, so I think so. I think I've got some street smarts.

After 'Arrested Development,' I didn't know for sure if I wanted to be an actor. I was hitting this wall, where I was the 'ethnic best friend' or the 'sassy teenager.' It felt like the same note, and I didn't feel like I was growing.

I want to be fulfilled creatively as an actress and get to be in roles that are meaningful and impactful. I hope the same thing for myself as a director, one day. I want to make things that have an impact on how we look at the world.

My very best friend died in a car accident when I was 16 years old. That was the hardest blow emotionally that I have ever had to endure. Suddenly, you realize tomorrow might not come. Now I live by the motto, 'Today is what I have.'

I have a hard time articulating the emotional experience of working on a film. Even when I have meetings on films or discussing them with directors, I find that’s my biggest challenge. Different words mean different things to people.

I have a hard time articulating the emotional experience of working on a film. Even when I have meetings on films or discussing them with directors, I find that's my biggest challenge. Different words mean different things to people.

When youre a stay-at-home mother you have to pretend its really boring, but its not. Its enriching and fulfilling, and an amazing experience. And then when youre a working mother you have to pretend that you feel guilty all day long.

Everyone can help. We can educate ourselves and our children about other countries and cultures. We have a responsibility to be aware of others and I believe this will inspire the individual way each person can make their difference.

At the end of the day I'm gonna be dead one day, and what people say about me is going what I accomplished and what I did in my life and how my children are. And I don't think it's gonna be what was printed in the tabloids this year.

I think it's really important to give yourself a very big question that you're working on that you can come home to, even if you, you know, are going to have to go without a cup of coffee or even a meal, that that should nourish you.

You know, right now, they say - I don't know who says this, but somebody told me - there's three male roles to every female role. And I guess I'd work on evening that up. Making great roles for women. It's just such a huge challenge.

That's one of the beauties of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim and their work together. They have such a depth to the emotional exploration of the story that they're telling, but there's always a release, and the release is a laugh.

There is a big misconception about arranged marriage. Yes, it can mean that you meet someone and then have to marry them, but this was my mother saying, 'I'm going to introduce you to so-and-so - If you don't like them, fair enough.'

A lot of entertainment, and especially in a half-hour format, can be all jokes, all the time. And some of those jokes can be really, really funny, but what I respond to, as a viewers, is identification or caring about the characters.

'Scary Movie' was a different type of comedy than I'm used to. I've mostly done sitcoms, so working with David Zucker, who wrote the film and who directed the last two 'Scary Movie's and 'Airplane' and 'Naked Gun,' was a lot of help.

No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?

People in these places don't know Audrey Hepburn, but they recognise the name UNICEF. When they see UNICEF their faces light up, because they know that something is happening. In the Sudan, for example, they call a water pump UNICEF.

I think the best kind of comedy is the least self conscious. I think if you just sort of let the comedy happen without the elbow nudge, did you get it, did you get it. I love straight face comedy or subtle - relatively subtle comedy.

You could put me on a stage in front of 100 people, and I could do a tap dance, but one-on-one was really difficult for me. And it took me most of my life to learn how to work with that anxiety, to embrace and be comfortable with it.

I like starting off the new year fresh. I'm excited to see how 2013 turns out. Maybe because I'm an actress and I am always on a diet and fitness program, but my New Year's resolution is to let myself be nice to myself about my body.

I certainly know women who had children, quit their jobs, and still have full-time nannies. That's who these women are: Even to the detriment of their own relationship with their kids, they want to appear perfect Martha Stewart moms.

I have great ideas, but the follow through is always really difficult for me. As my kid gets a little bit older, if I feel like I have a little bit more time on my hands, I'd like to get more into developing ideas and writing things.

Well, I don't think I've ever consciously come up with tricks and tools to, kind of, hide. I do think I'm a bit more vigilant, in terms of safety issues and things. And sometimes it is kind of nice to try to hold onto your anonymity.

Weezer's 'El Scorcho.' I'm in a '90s cover band called 'Straight 2 Video' with members of the crew from 'The Vampire Diaries,' and we played this song at our wrap party. I grin from ear to ear every time I scream this song in my car.

I had it in my contract with CBS, a very weird clause that was never written before and certainly not since, that if I wanted to do a variety show within the first five years of the contract, CBS would have to put it on for 30 shows.

I'm fine, but I'm bipolar. I'm on seven medications, and I take medication three times a day. This constantly puts me in touch with the illness I have. I'm never quite allowed to be free of that for a day. It's like being a diabetic.

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