When you're doing voice work, you're in a bubble where you just think about the story and the words. They record you on video while you're doing the voice work, so they capture how your face is moving and the gestures you make.
I've never traveled to promote anything I've been in. I've only been to about two or three premieres. The way I work, I do bits, and then I'm off to something else, whether it's theater or another project.
On 'Angel' I got to work a lot with Mike Massa, who was David Boreanaz' stunt double, and Mike would let me do most of my stuff by myself. I did almost all my fight scenes by myself.
My husband jokes that I'll invite people over for dinner and he won't know who they are or where I met them. But in my work world, I've never really been tempted to tell too much of my story.
I had to ride a horse once. In 'King Arthur.' I said I could ride, but I had to call for lessons on the day the deal was signed. I started out on this little chunky thing and slowly moved up. It was months of work.
After college, I went to Alley Theatre in Houston to work in their apprentice actor program. I thought I was gonna get discovered. It didn't happen. I moved back to Germantown, Tennessee, outside of Memphis, and taught at my old high school.
I'm always calculating what I want to do, who I want to be, what I want to accomplish. I don't need to worry about that - that's always there on a slow simmer. The muscle I have to work on is being more present.
I don't believe I can offend you in a comedy club. I don't believe I can offend you in a concert. A comedy club is a place where you work out material; you're trying material.
I had done some commercial work in junior high and stuff - my mother would bring me into the city, and we'd go on these crazy castings. Acting was something I always dreamed of doing... it was my passion when I was young.
And I do think that earlier in my career, I did make a very conscious decision to make sure that I was doing work that wasn't necessarily given to me, and that people didn't necessarily think that I would be able to do.
So how critics will perceive your film or your work, or whether your movie is going to make $100 million at the box office, or whether you are going to be winning any awards - well, you have no control over that.
By 1949, there was no more work for me out there, and I went to New York in 1950 and just did whatever I could. Mainly television. Some Broadway. A lot of dinner theater work, which is not a very satisfactory medium.
It's tourists in New York. Everything is geared towards that. It's so hard on Broadway now for them to get people in there. They have to compete with so many other entertainments, so they have to bring a star in which puts people there out of work.
My teachers encouraged me to audition for some professional work during our summer vacation. I landed my first job. It was for the National Theatre Company's Mimika Pantomime troupe. I ended up touring with them for the next two years.
I work with a place in Santa Monica called Phase IV. My doctor recommended them to me when I started losing weight. They help people train for things like triathlons or biking and running races. They offer physical therapists, testing, lectures.
It's weird to make new friends, but we're three seasons in with 'The Exes,' and now it feels a lot like 'Scrubs,' where I'm very lucky because I get to work people like Wayne Knight, who I really like.
An ideal movie would be, like - to get this to happen, I have to work so much harder - but imagine Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy... Who else? Donald Faison. Directed by Steven Spielberg. That would be awesome.
To me ,acting is all about hard work and talent. Once you get your first wrinkle, if you are a female actress, nobody will care about what you look like - it's all about what you can do.
I've always drawn, for example, and I did consider when I was younger, it was either do I become an actor or do I become an animator cartoonist at that point. Do I work at Disneyworld or something and do animated cells or something?
I was scouted when I was, like, sixteen, and I hated it. I wasn't ready to work. When I turned 19, I decided to move to Paris to pursue modeling for myself there. It was kind of a way to get out of the house and discover something for myself, in a wa...
I was being groomed as an undergraduate to specialize in Midwestern prehistory, but going back to my teenage days, my interest has always been in our early human ancestors. I wanted to work in Africa.
