I'm a very thoughtful, forward-thinking, planner kind of person. I love Excel spreadsheets and five-year-plans, and I love to review every year how my New Year's resolutions went.
I had this crazy job, though, when I first got to Los Angeles... I answered this ad in the back of the newspaper to be a telephone psychic, and I did that for two days.
Finally, I was called for "The Office" and I was really lucky, because a lot of the shows that I went out for I would work my way up from, like, an audition with the casting director to the director to the producers to the studio, I'd go through seven auditions, and then they'd give the role to a famous actress.
I think I am an actress and I'm artistic and I love spontaneity and all of that, but I just decided really early on that if I didn't also try to ground myself I would probably end up like this character of Laura in A Little Help , or like so many young people in Hollywood, sort of go off the rails. So I'm pretty attached to my routines and my grounded ways.
I think I enjoy regressing. There's a part of living like that that's really fun. It's like there's no consequences: If you want to drink, you drink; if you're hungover the next day and you're late to work, who cares? There's something very appealing about having no accountability in life, but it's just not a way that I had the energy to live forever.
I've been really lucky. I didn't have any morning sickness and I've been off work for most of my pregnancy, so I've been able to do things like work out with a trainer and do prenatal yoga and all these things that have kept my body very agile and pain-free.
I think we all spend, sometimes, more time at our jobs than we do at home, and there are people that we wouldn't necessarily choose to spend so much time with. So those irritations and those, just those situations I think are really relatable.
I always worry that people are going to be very confused; sometimes timelines get confused with how movies get made. So when I say, "Oh, I made this movie when I was going through a divorce," people think, "Oh no! She's pregnant with a child and divorced?"
That character in Solitary Man is probably most like me in real life: a solid person who has a good head on her shoulders and is very driven and practical, and not afraid to set boundaries. That's sort of my center. I come from the same place as the character in Solitary Man.
I was definitely raised this way. My folks are very grounded, normal people, and I wasn't raised in the entertainment industry. I just grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, in a very normal family. I wasn't a child actor or anything like that.
I still get nervous when I have a lot of makeup on, a big hairdo, and a dress.
I'm a believer in the parent first, friend second philosophy, and trying to find that balance.
Sometimes doing a movie for a short period of time is better than committing eight months to a television show.
I went to a little liberal-arts college in Missouri called Truman State University.
The Farrelly brothers make movies the way you imagine a movie set would be when you're a kid - fun all the time.
I studied theater in college, and I really wanted to be an actress and play a lot of different roles. Then I made landing on a television comedy my main focus.
I don't know if this is true of everyone, but I have this relationship with my parents where, despite however mature or articulate or grown-up I think I've become, as soon as I go home, I turn into this petulant 13-year-old, especially with the tone of my voice.
I got divorced, after having been married for almost eight years. That is a very life-altering experience. There's a period of time that you go through, where you're having to adjust to knowing yourself and knowing who you are from being a couple to being an individual again.
It makes it really hard to just go to a dinner party because, in my work life, I'm surrounded by the funniest people, ever. I'm really spoiled. I laugh a lot, in my day.
Tilda Swinton is a great example of a person who completely disappears into a role.
I loved the domesticity of my life as a struggling actor. When I wasn't going to auditions, I could do things like cook dishes from scratch and take them to parties or be really thoughtful about birthdays and anniversaries.
You never go into a marriage expecting to get divorced. You go into a marriage expecting it's going to last forever, and you have a lot of ways you dream about the future. You have all these expectations, and then you have to adjust those expectations, and it can be a very unnerving, confusing time.
I get really excited about jewelry.
As the lead of a movie, you really set the tone off-camera as well, and that's a really big responsibility.
I also love horror movies; I like me a big Peter Berg action movie. I'm a movie lover in general.
