Playing Isabella in 'Measure for Measure' pushed me to my limits. Janet Suzman was directing, and she was very hard on me. I went through phases of not liking her at the time, but I loved her for it in the end.
By the time I was four, I would walk around the corner and wait at a local streetcar stop, get on the streetcar with somebody who looked like they could be my mother and go to the end of the line.
I have the libido of a 15-year-old boy. My sex drive is so high. I'd rather have sex with Brian all the time than leave the house. He doesn't mind.
Even when I was a child, I always wanted to be older. I realised just in time that it's a mistake and to enjoy my youth while I had it.
I'm aggressive, quite frankly, because Staten Island gets screwed all the time. And if I'm not aggressive, then I won't be successful. That's not being a bad boy. That's doing my job.
I was brought up in an environment to believe that my opinion was important, that I had something to say, and that it was no less powerful because I was young, a girl, at the time really unattractive, definitely not the smartest kid in the class.
I do get a fair amount of scripts; I got 'Frozen River' kinda just that way. I have a hard time turning my back on anybody who says they have something for me.
People see me as someone who doesn't take any crap from anyone - which I don't - but it's my shtick, and I obviously don't act like that all the time.
I pick and choose what I want to do at any given time, and what not to do, importantly. My agents, I won't hear about any offers or options.
Like the vast majority of my constituents, I continue to be concerned about record profits reported by petroleum companies at a time when consumers are paying record high prices for gasoline.
My top most priority is to deal with India's massive social and economic problems, so that chronic poverty, ignorance and disease can be conquered in a reasonably short period of time.
My favorite TV show of all time is 'The Wire,' which has the feeling of a project-based show. You draw in people from disparate parts of the world, and they have to work together to achieve a goal.
I have a hard time getting motivated to do something that seems like a career move. I've gotten into vague trouble with my agents for turning down work that I thought was exploitative.
It's frustrating actually, the time involved in getting something released these days. My new CD has actually been finished for a year. It's only now that it's being released.
My teachers probably tried to get me interested in other things at school, but I was very young when I decided that I wanted to act. By the time I was 12, I was hell-bent on it.
Raft told me how to walk with him in a scene: We'd start off in a long shot normal, and about the time we got together in a close-up, I'd be bending my knees so I'd be shorter.
When I was born, some of our relatives came to our house and told my mother, 'Don't worry, next time you will have a son.'
I thought at the time of my parents' divorce that I was upset by deeper, more profound things and I was just taking it out on the joint custody agreement. But that disruption was bad enough. That was a huge deal for a teenager.
I gotta have my long trench coats, a nice scarf for the winter time when you're walking around, and some nice fitted jeans to go with the trench coats.
I remember doing my SATs on a film set; you had to complete the tests in a certain time and, obviously, you couldn't be interrupted. I think I did pretty well; it wasn't too difficult.
You're going to a bunch of auditions, and most of the time you're just getting denied, but just staying in there and keeping my head and being determined helped. Growing is what's challenging; you have to constantly practice your craft.
