What is wrong with you people?
Things don't always tie up in a nice bow. Even when you make strides with people and relationships, it's complicated.
Being onstage is just a feeling that you cannot duplicate anywhere else because the energy that the audience is giving you forces you to give more energy. It's such an output and exchange of energy. You can't do that anywhere else.
I'm ready and open to meeting the person that hopefully I'll share my life with. It takes a long time to get to that place.
People saw me as just a singer - yeah, a pretty face who could sing - and not more than that.
Life doesn't move in a linear fashion. Life makes lefts and rights, and it doubles back.
Cats and I have an understanding, but we choose not to interact often.
In other ways, you constantly have to change people's opinion of you as one thing, especially if you want to play different roles. You have to shatter that image sometimes. I've had to do it before with stage roles, to get roles. I'm drawn to kind of darker, misfit things. I would like to, especially in film, play against type and do some heavier stuff. I'm intrigued by projects that deal with problematic people and things.
It's interesting, a lot of my friends and family thought that was the moment I kind of showed everyone my humor; the silly side of me that friends and family know, so that could be what people were responding to. I have a big sense of humor, and people who know me know that silly side of me, so moving forward, I think it gives me the freedom and confidence to do more of that.
I still sing every day - in the shower or on the set all day. I'm sure everyone will tell you that I never shut up. But it's not in the capacity that I would like to.
I was very unsure about what I wanted to do in high school.
I just feel like I have a lot to prove.
I was a very awkward high schooler, especially in early high school. I had the middle part with a swoop, all that. It was the late ’90s!
Basically, I didn't want to sing anything for the sake of singing it. There were some songs where I really wailed, but because it's such an intimate space anything I chose to sing simply to make sound was going to come off an inauthentic. So I was really happy with where it landed - every song I sang, I loved for one reason or another. I didn't have to worry about selling a song.
Once I came to acting, it was almost a thing where there weren't enough hours in the day to work on stuff because I was so passionate about it.
Awards are not something that I measure my work by. I've been so fortunate and I've gotten to do such terrific things that it seems petty to look back and say, 'Oh, I should have gotten that prize.' I've been so blessed, it's hard to look back and think anything but that, so I have no disappointments.
I feel like I've been dealing with that building over the years because of the Broadway community, so I'm treating it in the same way - I've always tried to keep my personal life private. I didn't get into this business for notoriety or fame. I don't go to places to be seen and that's not going to change.
Especially like right now, I'm not shooting a show so you get to act. You get to do that stuff, kind of treat everyone as 'All right, throw the paint against the wall and see what I can do with this and what people say.' I think it's a great mental workout because you have to ready something, learn something fast. It's good to stay on your toes and keep sharp if you're auditioning.
You always have to make positive choices as an actor, even when you're playing someone who may not be doing the best things.
In an ideal world for me, I would like to go back and forth [between film and theater]. I kind of want to do it all
It's every actor's dream to work in a hit show on Broadway and also shoot a television show.
That's the thing about stage: It's something you can't find anywhere else. It's a two-and-a-half, three-hour experience, and it's a real relationship. You're sending out energy from the stage, but the audience is giving you back so much also, so that's also lifting you and pushing you forward as you're performing and giving you so much energy. You can't find it anywhere else, and that's why people get addicted to being on stage, and when they're not on stage are kind of looking for that and constantly searching for it.
After 9/11, the amount of applicants the FBI received increased exponentially. Whereas you used to require a college degree, and it was a small group of people who were just out of college, after 9/11, it changed.
I can clap with one hand.
Singing for stage, if you don't hear yourself, that's when you push, and that's when you can hurt your voice sometimes. So if I can hear myself in my ear, it really helps me to find that balance of how loud I needed to be singing.
