I come from classical theater training and when I went to college it was a bunch of kids that were hand-picked from around the world. I was around such brilliant young minds and incredible artists with incredible teachers.
I acted in high school and studied at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford for one summer. I minored in theater, and I was always acting growing up and stuff, but really, I was just more interested in the comedy of it all. So for me, it's always comedy, and then acting is just one medium of comedy.
I'm the girl that waits for the director to say, 'I like that,' or 'Can you boost it up?,' or 'Can you pull it down?' I'm that kind of actor. I started in theater, so that's the feedback that I'm accustomed to. It's the feedback that I really thrive off of.
I don't come from an artistic family, so I didn't know what theater was. I was working on Wall Street in the '90s, and I went to see 'Appointment With a High-Wire Lady' at Ensemble Studio Theatre, and it affected me so deeply. It changed everything I thought about the arts. I quit banking and became an actor.
I had one of the best days of my life. I spent the afternoon with my two kids and my ex-wife at Serendipity. Then I came to the theater, and you know, I think I did the play the best I've ever done it.
Film is really the one art form that can effectively use silence. Music and theater can play with silence, but they can't sustain silence without losing energy, whereas film can go into a silent mode and stay there for minutes at a time.
I fell so hard for the theater. I knew it was a place where you can sort out your life.
There are days when I think the National Endowment for the Arts should issue a quota system for the production of plays by women - especially when you realize women buy 70 percent of all theater tickets.
I've done a lot of guerrilla theater in my time.
Books and theater were the way I understood the world and also the way I organized my sense of morality, of how to live a good life.
I used to teach acting in a maximum security men's prison. I worked with guys with the most dysfunctional behavior problems. I probably learned more there than from my prestigious theater degree.
I'm a very shy person, and I never tried to do theater. I've been asked many, many times by the most incredible authors in America to do theater. And I always said no, not knowing what it is to be on the stage and to do theater.
