I feel like everyone directs their own career according to their taste, what they migrate to emotionally and what kind of artists they want to work with. And I'm lucky enough to be in a position where I can wait six months for a project that really i...
It's a luxury being able to work every day in the streets of Manhattan. It doesn't get much cooler than that. When you move to New York, that's exactly what you dream of. And I'm doing it.
When I finished my residency in New Orleans, I went to L.A. where I would work as a doctor during the day, and then at night I would actually go to The Improv and do standup, all the while kind of cultivating my comedy resume.
I don't know if there's ever been a female-driven film or a male-driven film. I don't believe in that. I believe a film is a film - a movie can only work if everything about the film works.
It never ceases to surprise me, the people I get to work with. I'm in a French film with Sandrine Bonnaire? I adore Sandrine Bonnaire. I'm doing a picture for Robert Redford? The Sundance Kid? I have to pinch myself sometimes.
My junior year, I was in a play at school and five days before opening night, I still didn't know my lines. Opening night was a disaster. I was so embarrassed. The director made me work backstage for the rest of the performance.
When you grow up around it, I just watched my father work really hard. He wasn't around as much as I would have liked. And when I grew up, I understood why.
I think people do work too much. I've never been able to understand the whole 'make hay while the sun shines' thing. Either I want to work or I don't want to work.
I did a little theatre work after that and the following year I got another part in a television series. Then it was almost to the end of the year before I got more work. That was coming to terms with the reality of the vocation I had chosen.
That is a big danger, losing your inspiration. When I work in film and television I try to do each take a little differently. I never want to do the same thing twice, because then you're not being spontaneous, you're just recreating something.
I make fun of guys when I like them. I act like I'm 10 years old. I do it as a test to see if they can laugh at themselves. If they get sensitive, then it's like, 'Um, this isn't going to work.'
When I work out, I wear two in-the-ear hearing aids for comfort, and then I wear the behind-the-ears for my day-to-day non-physical activities, when I need maximum hearing and to communicate with people and do interviews!
So I majored in Drama, did all the plays that were possible to do, skated through school in order to be in every production on stage or backstage in whatever capacity and I came to New York looking for work in the summers.
I'm a big fan of Edouard Vuillard, so I'd like anything by him - particularly a painting called 'Madame Hessel on the Sofa.' His work is realistic without being literal: I can really imagine what Madame Hessel is thinking.
I always sort of create practical problems so that I don't have to see a film I've just done. I'm too vulnerable, too fragile. People see your work, and there's nothing you can do. You're completely exposed.
My mother had been a country and western singer but when she moved out to Hollywood found it very difficult to get work so when I was born they put me into dance classes and singing classes as soon as I could walk actually.
It was a dream come true working with Johnny Depp. He's always been my acting idol. Working with him and watching him work taught me a lot as an actor. He's very down to earth and a lot of fun to hang out with.
You have to, in a way, just get your head down and do the work and not expect every day to bring riches and not expect every minute to bring wild excitement, 'cause it just doesn't. It doesn't on films, anyway.
My parents were working performers, so obviously I saw that there wasn't a lot of fairy tale going on there. It was a precarious world. One that they were deeply committed to and deeply loved, but one that required a lot of hard work.
I'm just not one of these guys who, like, you know, woke up with a six-pack. I need Skittles. I have to eat very particularly and I have to work out like a madman. And then it looks like... okay.
A New York casting director, who shall remain nameless, once said to me, 'Marcia, you have what I call the flaring-nostril look, and until you get something done about it, you will never, ever work.'
