When I first came to California, it was fun and exciting to get any part in any movie and get paid for it. Because of my size and my background, it seemed like I was right for just about anything.
I always laugh and say, 'Dudes, if I have to choose, I'm a political person first. I would never do another movie again and be completely happy.' I need to say how I feel.
I used Vamps as a casting couch! I pretty much did, because I was casting 'L!fe Happens' while I was on the set of Vamps, and anybody I had ever worked with, I asked to be in this movie.
You don't always just have to do an indie movie to feel like you're controlling it with a few people that you really have connected with, creatively. You can do it on a bigger scale.
The problem with being a film actress or a movie star is that people see you so huge that somehow you're visually massive or somehow you're in some removed space, which is a television or wherever. It somehow takes your humanity.
People think I must have been turning cartwheels on the night I sealed the movie deal - which was only two days after sealing the book deal - but I was really quite terrified.
Having a lot of people suddenly depending on me to get the job done was a marvelous motivator. The book and movie deals seemed to flip a switch in my head, and off I went.
The only pitch I have to movie people is the same as this one: Just give me $8 million. I'm not telling you what it's about and I'm not telling you who's in it.
Often in the past, there have been authors that were deeply disappointed in their adaptation, but that's because they haven't accepted the fact that a movie is a different thing, and it can't possibly be the same as the book.
When I was eight years old I went to visit my brother who was working on a movie of the week with my mother and I saw how much fun he was having and I decided I wanted to try it too.
Nobody's favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody's favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?
I'm a kid that went to theater school. I thought I was going to be making my living doing plays regionally or in New York or on Broadway, and maybe if I got lucky I would do a movie here or there.
I'm obsessed with Michael Fassbender. He's unbelievable. I think he's a modern day Brando. Every movie that he's done in the past couple years, I just died for him. He's extremely fascinating.
'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is a movie that I just find flawless. Jack Nicholson... I just saw 'The Shining' again the other day; he's so brilliant. He's such a brilliant actor, just unbelievable.
The thing with film is that it's so wide-reaching compared to comedy. When I release my comedy special, half a million people will see it. If I release a movie, five to ten million people will see it.
The glance embroiders in joy, knits in pain, and sews in boredom. When indifferent, the eye takes stills, when interested, movies. Laughter is regional: a smile extends over the whole face.
I would say that it's a lot easier, especially if you have a bit of an attention deficit disorder, to be on a movie because you can give it your all, and kill yourself for however many months, and then let it go.
There was something to me that was really compelling about that woman, already knowing she couldn't get pregnant. When I made that movie I was maybe 24, and to be 24 and already know you can't get pregnant, that was really interesting to me.
People give me things at shows-the Robot from Japan. What I would treasure the most is a little doll of the general from the movie-and if they don't make it, I'll make my own and bring it to shows and sign it.
Phones and soundtracks and Muzak and fountains replace genuine and unpredictable human contact with a seamless soundtrack from a bad movie and a cliche that makes us believe we must all be happy.
Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.
