I was always prepared for my 'Fringe' journey to end immediately. I had only signed up for a guest role but they kept bringing me back in the third season as a recurring character. So pretty much every time I went to film a 'Fringe' episode I kind of said goodbye to the show, but then they kept bringing me back.
I wasn't aware of my dad being an actor when I was young. I remember there was an Australian children's entertainer on television called Ralph Harris and when I'd say my father was an actor, kids would say, you know, 'oh, is he Ralph Harris?' And I had to say no and then they would lose interest.
As a kid it's adorable to have a gap in your teeth. But then, because of the shifting in my mouth, I started whistling through it, and as a 32-year-old woman, whistling while you speak in sort of annoying.
You go to Europe, and they have their very wealthy elites, and then everybody else is, you know, a couple of steps above a peasant, basically.
If a great role comes along, and you are too tall to play it, then I think the role is too small for your talents.
Madonna's like a black widow spider. She tends to use people, then they shrivel up and disappear.
When I first started out in Houston, it was theater or bust. And I loved it. I still love it. And then I went to undergraduate and graduate school for acting.
I was obsessed with Carol Burnett and then Tracey Ullman. Like, obsessed with their shows.
Ultimately, so much Dr. Seuss is about empowerment. He invites us to disappear into our imagination and then blows the doors off what that can mean.
Think of a forest, then imagine taking 10,000 trees and squeezing them together until there is essentially no space between them. That's what the neocortical column looks like.
This is a lifetime job. You don't look at it, you know, now and then. It doesn't really matter. When the market comes down, then I buy my land very cheaply, so I make my money on that.
Everybody gets through a phase where it's, 'Ah, if I could just sound just like Vince Gill.' Then you figure out that you have your own voice, whether you like it or not, and that's what you should stick with.
I've seen guys on the street who look the part of a rock star just as much as any rock star. If you feel it and you believe it, then you can get away with it. Rock on!
If I don't have the drive and determination to wake up every day and train with young, hungry fighters, if I don't want to do that, then I need to get out of the game, but as long as my body says I'm all right, and my hunger stays the same, I'm going to keep going.
I like doing a lot of research, and then you get there, you're in wardrobe, and then you're just reacting to what the other person is doing. The other actor is reacting to what you're doing, and it's this great back and forth. Because you've done all this research, you can use some of it or throw a lot of it out. You can get lost in it.
If you're comfortable with yourself, then you'll look beautiful. If you're not feeling comfortable with yourself, than that kind of shows. I think that as cheesy as the pageant industry can be seen at times, it actually does help women - boosting their confidence and growing into their own. I have to give it credit for that.
I've been very fortunate with my three spec scripts - which is sort of my thematic trilogy of the American Frontier. With 'Sicario', 'Hell or High Water' and then 'Wind River' - which is the third - there were no rewrites. It was the first draft for all three.
I like bowling. I suck at it, but I like it. You know what's so funny? I have days when I'm absolutely great at doing it, and then I have days when I just don't understand it.
You do the best you can with what's thrown at you, then you try again.
I did a shoot with massive iguanas in Costa Rica when I was modeling back then. They were like little dinosaurs, and they sat right across my arms and by my face. The guy told me not to make any sudden movements because they had enormous claws. The guy said he would rip my skin if he attacked.
It often takes a couple of years to get a script right and then takes a couple of years to get financing together.
When I think of the moment I knew that my marriage to Josiah would end, there were a few moments before I really, really knew. I probably knew, when I saw my ex-husband and his now wife - then colleague - having tea together in his office, that something was amiss.
Growing up, I wanted to be a musician. My mother, in typical Filipino-mom fashion, would always make me go up in front of people at parties to sing. Back then, as a kid, I was mortified. In retrospect, I see that doing that as a child helped me get over my fear of being in front of people.
In a very literal way, of course, Shakespeare did change the course of history: when it didn't fit the plot he had in mind, he simply rewrote it. His English histories play fast and loose with chronology and fact to achieve the desired dramatic effect, re-ordering history even as it was then understood.
At first, I did have that thought, like, 'Oh crap, what are we going to do after?' Then I realized 'Girl in a Country Song' was an honest, truthful song, and we were telling our truth, and that's all we have to do - write songs that are true and tell our stories.
First you help yourself, and then you can help everybody.
On Sunday morning, it's Brooklyn Bagels on Beverly Boulevard. We get them hot. Then we walk some of the famous Silver Lake steps or hike in the hills to the highest vantage point to see the reservoir.
The goal with 'Alpha' was to run towards the cliches and then to break through them, and that doesn't change depending on the medium.
Businesses should no longer be allowed to depress wages by hiring illegal labor and then falsely claim that Americans don't want to do the jobs.
The problem in a lot of low-income countries is that people take out loans to go and get degrees, which are then irrelevant in the job market.
I don't drink much anymore, but when I traveled with Frank Sinatra, God rest his soul, I used to drink like I could do it. He made it a test. In Vegas, the Rat Pack, which I was a little part of, drank all night and slept most of the day. Then, about 5 o'clock, we'd meet in the hotel steam room, lock the door, and steam our brains out.
One of the things that people complain about is loneliness, disconnectedness. If you live in a society where your life is rarely threatened and most of your relationships are more on an economic exchange basis, then this could leave people feeling less connected.
We used to say poor people had lousy genes. Then we decided that wasn't OK, but we transferred the prejudice to upbringing. We said, 'You were neglected as a child, so you'll never make it.' That's just as pernicious.
So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and... Wanda Sykes and John Legend... we're adding to the database that scholars can then draw from to generalize about the complexity of the American experience. And that's the contribution that family trees make to broader scholarship.
If Sherlock Holmes can survive the Reichenbach Falls, then surely we have not seen the last of Detective Sergeant John Munch.
Science and vision are not opposites or even at odds. They need each other. I sometimes hear other startup folks say something along the lines of: 'If entrepreneurship was a science, then anyone could do it.' I'd like to point out that even science is a science, and still very few people can do it, let alone do it well.