I'm just a person. I'm not anything!
I don't like being able to be reached. I enjoy my solitude. Even people having my phone number seems like too much.
Any movie I've done, my character has had a secret. Whether it's in the movie or not, it is usually never and it's usually not something I tell anybody. It is for me.
The only way I can feel comfortable being an actor is if I can find stories that I believe are important to be shared.
I have a lot of different influences. Everything from Maroon 5, Gwen Stefani, The Clash, Kanye West - just a lot of different artists.
I won't do things for money. I can't. So I'll hold out and say, in my mind, 'There's a really cool diner down the street from my house. They make really good pancakes; I'd be happy doing that.'
A big producer offered me the part of the pretty girl that waits at home for the guy, and I couldn't do it. That's not a story I ever want to tell.
I was home-schooled, was always very close with my mom, and was very straight-laced and square. I was never the rebellious one, and I never threw hissy fits. I was the type of person that would show a Powerpoint presentation about why I should do something versus crying and screaming over it.
I'm 25. I'm a white, blonde girl in the entertainment industry - it's so easy to fall into a world of pleasing everyone. I feel more comfortable showing all these odd angles to myself.
I can't tell you how many times I quit only to realize that when the work has been your life, you don't really have a life without it.
For some reason, chewing gum for me gets my brain going.
Maybe it goes away, but this is the way I've chosen to live: I want to go down or rise up as an artist. I don't want to get swept up in lipstick or whatever the hell.
'Short Term 12' was such a marathon. It's like trying to convey the same emotional depth as 'The Gambler' but with less time and a fingernail's worth of the budget.
I'm just not in a place in my life where I worry about something unnecessarily.
I wasn't perfect and didn't have it together. I felt alone. So through acting, I decided to be a shape shifter and with every role become the character instead of being myself. It meant about 10 years of no one knowing I was the same person in every movie.
Whenever you want something that you're not going to get, suddenly the whiney 3-year-old comes out in you.
I'm not a gourmet. I just like the planet.
I'm really not interested in acting as a facade, I'm interested in it as an emotional expression and as a transcendent experience for an individual. I find that a lot of people, a lot of young actors, haven't gotten to the point where they're comfortable being stripped down. They're still interested in ornate jackets.
Through film, I realized that was a safe place for me to play. It was a safe place for me to express myself and explore these things that I was afraid to explore in my real life.
Everything is changing all the time, and I'm not going to stress out and spend my entire time chasing something that ultimately doesn't exist.
There is so much to be gained from adulthood! Feelings just become so much deeper. The feeling of sadness and loss is much deeper than when you were a kid, but the feelings of love and happiness have also so much more dimension when you get older... That is what's so hard and exciting about being a human being.
I'm not really out in the world all that much. I mean, I live with no phone signal, in the hills surrounded by trees, and I have, like, a mom and two baby deer that come by all the time, and my dogs and the squirrels are in a full-on feud every morning.
As much as I love acting, I just want to be a healthy person.
Trends are not real; they are for the consumer, and once we can get enough of us to free ourselves from it and realize that it's not about strong-arming our way through, it's about understanding that we are so needed for the balance of this planet, then I think we can start having changes.
I started acting in second grade - my first role was in the Thanksgiving play. I was the Indian chasing the turkey. All the other mom's encouraged my mom to get me into acting after that. Also, when I saw 'The Sound of Music' at Music Circus, I knew I wanted to act.
Any time I was at Trader Joes, and the person bagging my stuff would be like, 'Did I go to college with you? How do I know you?' Then it took awhile, and suddenly people were like, 'Oh, you are the girl from 'United States of Tara.'
It's really hard to see yourself and to recognize that you are a human being like everybody else. You just think everybody's judging you.
I'm trying to find new ways to entertain myself because, if my whole world is doing interviews, I might as well put them in places I've wanted to see.
When it comes to Nintendo products, I gotta go with the new stuff.
I watch clothes on other people, and it's like having a conversation before opening your mouth. For me, clothes come from the mind. They represent what's happening inside, and as long as they feel honestly like what I'm thinking about and going toward, I'm happy to bounce around and experience different things.
Toni Collette has been a huge influence. She was my absolute number one idol, and then I got 'United States of Tara.' I was pinching myself. I couldn't believe the first day I was on set, and I got pages of dialogue of real stuff to do with her.
Your brain is so lovely and so willing to please. It wants to help so much.
A lot of stuff I was reading in mythology was about how women used to be taught to be wild. The wild woman was an essence that existed in the world. We're still coming back from many years of us being chiseled out to be identical and quiet.
I'm always interested in whatever I can do to not look at my phone.
If I had my way, I would never do a leading role.
I had collages in my bedroom when I was a teenager.
