I certainly learned how to break down a text at Princeton, which helps me break down a script - or at least that's the line I feed my parents when they start wondering where all that good money went.
Sometimes I want to do something that's really funny and other times I read an indie script that is going to be made for nothing but I want to do it because I think that I can connect with something in the story.
They sent me the script and I thought that there was something very appealing and funny about it. Also, I was familiar with Mike Myers' work in Saturday Night Live, but I did not know the extent to which he would make this creation.
Oftentimes, you read these pilot scripts that come through for American work, and they don't sing to you. I've got to be honest, not many of them ignite the flame or give you that burning feeling of, 'Oh, God, I really want to be a part of this.'
I feel as though my career really hit its high point when I was cast as a supporting actress in 'American Wedding'. I thought the script had a lot of depth and intelligence, and it really just jumped off the page.
I learned how to write television scripts the same way I have learned to do almost everything else in my entire life, which is by reading.
I spent almost 3 months with Bergman, four hours every afternoon. We sat and went through the whole script. To be honest, most of the time we talked about life and other different things. It was really a wonderful time.
I think I remember from the offset I said, 'I've visited this territory. This isn't for me.' And then I read the script and I said, 'You know, this is completely something different. This is a whole new life.'
There's a rumor that there may be an attempt at organizing a possible script for a series on my life, which, when you look at my police record, you'd have to have more than one hour to tell the story.
To be honest, I never went to school for acting, and I never learned to break down a script. I took acting classes my whole life, but they never taught me anything about acting. They just taught me about myself.
I love 'Safe Men.' Now it's getting all this culty kind of - it just came out on DVD. That was awesome. I read that script, I never laughed so hard in my life.
I try to research or make up for myself what happened in any character's life. From when he was born until the first page of the script. I fill in the blanks.
When I was 21, I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for 'The Simpsons' who'd briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.
Reading a script is usually as exciting as reading a boilerplate legal document, so when you read one that makes you feel as if you're seeing the movie, you know it's something different.
When you're too robotic and scripted, the students tune you out. So I always tried to use different learning modalities - kinesthetic, auditory, visual, whatever might bring learning to life.
I've been reading scripts where they've been doing a lot of singing now, but within the dark, realistic story line. I would love, love, love, love to do that. But not a musical on Broadway, I don't have that kind of energy or stamina.
Most actors really love it, that's what they want to do. They burn to do it. And so they'll read a script and think, that's an interesting part. And because they love acting, that blinds them to the fact that the rest of it is pretentious nonsense, w...
All this flying around got on my nerves. But then I gave the script to Cathy to get her opinion. When she started to laugh, it was like 'That's it!'. I went to LA and I got the part.
Sometimes I read a script and it's obvious from early on that it's one where the suspension of disbelief has to develop strongly from page one. Some are more reality-based.
Oftentimes, in fact I think this is to my fault, I look at usually scripts as a whole. I should probably pay more attention to the character that I'm going to play and what they do.
If you are making a script based on a book it can be frustrating going back to the source novel, because you're turning the story into a totally different thing; the narrative of film is different from that of a book.
