Sometimes I feel that the people I'm writing are more real to me than the people around me. When you take that imaginative leap, you're living so much in that world.
There are people a lot smarter than me investigating nature versus nurture who would have a lot to say about that, but I think it's an enormous privilege to be born into a family where my parents had enough time to read to me and listen to my stories and foster my imagination. It's a privilege to have time to investigate your imagination. And not to have, like, an amount of stress on you as a kid that prevents you from maturing creatively.
Nothing's going to come to you by sitting around and waiting for it.
I'm not that interested in writing for myself. That's not where my impetus as a writer comes from.
I think action should be revealed through character, so if you have a plot problem, it's probably a character problem.
And then the really awful thing is that at the end of the day after crying and experiencing things, then you look at what you've written and you're like, 'Hmm, there's half a page that's good here.' Then you throw out everything else.
When I'm writing, I look like a fool because the parts are moving through me and I'm crying and laughing and making faces.
I guess I always like being asked questions about influence or inspiration, like, "What are you reading? Who are your heroes? Is there any one person you want to shout out to now?" I really love paying it forward with love and attention, because that's what I like to read.
I was really surprised when I started working and realized that you're actually on your own, a lot of the time. It makes you really responsible, as an actor.
In New York you can just walk out and be among people. You're on the subway among people, you go to cafes, you can talk to people.
You set up the story, but the characters start talking, and they go places that you didn't expect. You have to follow.
I'm always disappointed after an audition when I don't get a part and I hear, "Oh, she was too X, or too Y," and it's too much of a quality.
I'm used to very low-budget situations. In 'The Exploding Girl,' we were literally changing in Starbucks because we didn't have trailers.
If I'm not working, I don't feel complete.
I think most actors jump at the chance to do something where the camera's on them all the time.
When you're in the editing room, as a director, you get the opportunity to look at your work. As a writer, you can rewrite. But as an actor, unless you're watching playback, you really rely on the director to help you.
My hero is Michelle Williams, who I grew close to when we did 'Meek's Cutoff.' She's an extraordinary actor and mom.
Well, I have a sister that I'm very close with, and that relationship is probably the most intense relationship of my life to date, probably of my life, period.
And I think the female creative urge is intrinsically biologically linked to our ability to give birth to a child, even if we've never... I've never given birth, but I feel like it's part of our psychology.
What I did have was an incredible amount of belief in myself.
I don't have a lot of patience for boring arthouse movies.
I don't like pretentious films or pretentious people.
I always wrote. My parents are writers. It just seemed like something people did.
I find playwriting really painful. I love it, or I wouldn't do it, but I don't love the theater as much as I love movies.
I find playwriting to be incredibly difficult compared to screenwriting. Part of it is that I grew up watching movies and not watching plays.
