There's no slow build anymore where you get a little part, then you get a little better part, then a better part, until one day your agent calls you us and says, 'guess what, you're a movie star,' and you say, 'Thank you!'
I dropped out of high school three days into my senior year because I hated it because New York City public school is a mess. I certainly wasn't one for sitting in a classroom. Then I went off to college to North Carolina School of the Arts, then qui...
Let's put it this way- if The Fault in Our Stars was a person I would marry them. Will Grayson, WIll Grayson would be my maid/man of honor. Alaska and Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines and Let it Snow would be my best friends. In short- you can...
I'm not like other writers. I'm not hung up on using my own songs. In fact, my sister Bunny always tells me I sing other people's songs better than my own. She says I loosen up and give the songs a different feel.
I literally remember when I made my audition tape for 'Buffy'. I went to the Arsenal Mall. I got my outfit at Contempo Casuals in the Arsenal Mall and put some safety pins in my jeans. I remember telling whoever the clerk was that I was making a tape...
The only thing I really recommend, if you're starting out in stand-up is to not try to copy anybody else. You can be influenced by people. I was influenced by Steve Martin and Bob Newhart and Woody Allen, but I never tried to be someone else. I alway...
Some of the greatest actors on the planet are the most insecure people. Now I don't know if that insecurity necessarily equates to a lack of confidence. Some people are just very shy individuals. You give them a character to play and a script, and yo...
I don't write down my experiences, but I have a very decent memory. I have tons of books in which I write down phrases as they occur to me. That's how I write songs. I'll need a line and I'll go through the books and find it, the right rhyme and ever...
Weirdly enough, if I'm having trouble with a guitar part - not the playing of it but the writing - I'll mess around with echo and other effects, just turn everything up and make it as crazy as can be, and it winds up taking me somewhere. I've found s...
Drama made me happy. Being on stage made me feel alive. But I did what a lot of people do, and that's follow this path of leaving school and going to university. It was only at university that I realised the only thing that would make me a satisfied ...
After 'Somewhere' came out, people started to recognize me more. Whenever I was walking down the street, they'd be like, 'Oh, wow - are you Elle Fanning?' Before 'Somewhere,' they asked me if I was Dakota Fanning, because we looked alike, and I'd say...
I met Jack Nicholson when I was about 10 at a party of my uncle's, and it wasn't so much that I knew his films because I was small, but he wore sunglasses inside at night and I thought that must mean he was very important and was suitably star struck...
When I was four, we had to choose a musical instrument to play at school, and I chose the cello. I played until I was 18, and although I found it nerve-racking to play solo, I loved playing in an orchestra. When I left school I didn't carry on with i...
Two things I'm obsessed with are the countryside and fields and being in the open space and body parts, so you'll hear me mentioning body parts and human anatomy. I've listened to my songs and I think I am quite visual and I talk about bones and fles...
I never thought I'd say the sentence 'It was a real honour' - because that implies that you've done something pretty special. But now I've done that several times. Yesterday I was in Buckingham Palace - I actually met the Queen yesterday and that was...
Cover versions, that's my forte, that's all I ever used to do. When you play your own songs, it's quite scary, 'cause I'm quite honest and open, they can be very revealing. But covers, I don't have to think about, just get me up there!
If a hundred people want autographs, sometimes you have to say no because you've got to get up for a 4 A.M. flight or something. In that sense, it really pisses me off when people think you've become a diva. It's not becoming a diva, it's because of ...
I don't think there was ever a moment when I was like, 'Yeah, I want to be a singer!' I guess it just happened. I performed a lot when I was younger and stuff, but I remember getting to the point where I thought I might have to get a normal job.
When I first started acting, I had all these ideals about the kinds of roles I wanted to play, but the reality is that when you do television - and I do a lot of television - you get cast for qualities that you have as a person. So I look for qualiti...
It's incredibly fun to play someone that you don't like. It exorcises your own demons in a way. It's cathartic. We all have things that we don't like about ourselves, little things. And I get to amplify those things and put them out there. It's fun a...
Whether it's a blessing or a curse, I have always played someone like 10 years younger. When I was 23 or 24, I was playing 15 opposite Evan Rachel Wood in a movie called 'Pretty Persuasion.' She was 16 and nobody in a million years would have thought...
