- When you improvise, you work off the laughs from the audience, but when you step on stage to do standup, it's silent.
- I love great acting, as nerdy as that sounds.
- I'm not super comfortable in my skin. I have to make it work for me, and that usually amounts to making it uncomfortable for everyone else.
- A lot of independent films offer a harsh reality check.
- I am a Netflix/DVR junkie. I don't like to watch TV without a plan.
- I can't say I follow politics extremely closely, but I'm definitely aware of what's going on in the world.
- I get really weird when I'm not working. I have to keep working.
- I just want to keep finding special characters that I feel like I can bring to life and characters that are real and not superficial.
- I'm pretty good at weaseling my way into a job, even if I have no business being there.
- I've felt depressed many times in my life, so I can draw on those times in my life when I need to.
- If I have the option, I always read the paper or a book or something I can touch and destroy in my own hands.
- It's such a thing now, people making fun of other people on the Internet.
- My grandfather came over from Puerto Rico and raised his kids speaking English so that it would be easier for them to assimilate.
- There's no photo-shoot academy. If there was, I'd probably be kicked out.
- Well, I was obsessed with Judy Garland growing up. Like, obsessed.
- When I was doing comedy in New York, before I was in movies, I was never known as the deadpan actress. I was just a comedienne.
- I think being on a TV show is amazing but also, people get kind of used to seeing you a certain way and so it becomes a challenge to break free from that in a way.
- I would never do a commercial for something that is embarrassing, and I think that people maybe have a different perspective on what is embarrassing or not. Some people think doing a Revlon hair commercial is really cool. To me, that's embarrassing, but World of Warcraft - not embarrassing, very cool.
- I'm totally an anxious mess all the time. There's a constant dialogue going on in my brain, and it's just reminding me of all the failures that I have had, and all of the things I need to do, and all of the things I'm not doing good enough.
- When I was in high school, I was a really huge Saturday Night Live (1975) fan. I remember the cast around the time I started watching it - Will Ferrell, Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon, Cheri Oteri, Tracy Morgan. I did research to find out how people got on the show. Their bios always said they came from an improv team, so I started taking classes.
- When I'm on the couch, I usually have the TV on and my MacBook Air nearby. And sometimes, when my ADD is really kicking in, I have my iPad too. And my iPhone. And a magazine that I haven't gotten to. And a book under the pillow to my left.
- With stand-up, it doesn't matter who you are. If the audience claps because they love your movies, that clapping stops after five seconds, and then it's your job to make them laugh.
- I was a big fan of Winona Ryder in the '90s. I think she's kind of the shit.
- I don't let myself "surf" on the Web, or I would probably drown.
- Sarcasm is weird. Even not in acting, in life I feel like "sarcastic" is a word that people use to describe me sometimes so when I meet someone, it's almost like they feel like they have to also be sarcastic, but it can sometimes just come off as mean if it's not used in the right way.
- I'm like that person who hates going to magic shows--and I love magic, I love wizards--but going to a show where there is any possibility of audience participation is a nightmare for me.
- Tina Fey is one of my heroes.
- My people would love it if I smiled more, if I was more "approachable".
- Writing is hard--writing is the hardest.
- I like my name. My mom named me after a song by the 1970s group Bread. So, it's meaningful, and I like the song. It's a love song--kind of--but it's kind of depressing and dark.
- I watch Fanny and Alexander (1982) every year. There's obviously some dark stuff in it, but it's a great comfort movie to me. Whenever I'm shooting a film, and I have to go live in some weird hotel in a far-off location for a month or two, I put Fanny and Alexander on while I'm unpacking and trying to settle in. I don't speak fluent Swedish, but I have a decent command of it. I've picked up a lot of Swedish from watching Fanny so many times. I’m sort of obsessed with Scandinavia and love to travel around the region.
- Once I started doing community theater and I found my weirdo friends, I felt very emboldened to just really be myself and not care. Public pranks were a part of my growing up and it was this addictive feeling of doing something embarrassing and not caring what anyone thinks.
- My community theater taught me at an early age that it's OK to stand out and let your freak flag fly. I felt it was important to inspire people to be their authentic selves by making a fool of myself and not caring what others thought. Even though I have my own insecurities, I had a mission of disrupting social norms.
- I'm always interested in the silliness and the weirdness and the uncanniness of life.
- Honestly, the deadpan thing wasn't ever my thing. Sometimes when I'm in an uncomfortable situation, when I'm on talk shows or stuff like that, it's just an easy defense mechanism for me to kind of slip into that persona.
- I just think that they're silly, and the format makes me uncomfortable on so many levels, so my way of dealing with it is to just play into that. But I think there is an element of me unconsciously giving people what they want. You're weird on talk shows and then people expect that again and then you get caught in this trap. It's funny because I'm very nervous before I go on. I don't have this elaborate performance ready.
- It's hard for me to keep in perspective what has happened or where I am in my career. I never feel satisfied. I never feel like I can take a break. So I'm looking forward to just feeling that way my whole life.
- It's weird that deadpan became my thing. I was never sarcastic or petulant. In school, my superlative wasn't Most Likely to Hate the World. I wasn't like that at all. I was president of everything I could be president of. I wasn't, like, the weird one making comments at the back of the class. I was at the front of the class.
- I'm a puddle. I'm a triple cancer, like, I can't cry enough. I'm a romantic. I just don't show my cards. On talk shows- I don't even know what people are talking about- every time I do a talk show, backstage I'm like 'this time I'm going to be normal', and I just blow it every time. I think, people are just waiting for me to say something weird, so then it's just this weird process that feeds on itself. I'm like 'well you gotta give them what they want', but what is it? I don't even know. I feel like, up here, I'm on the hamster wheel. They're so unnatural those situations.
- For me, April Ludgate was a human being that had so many things going on and motivations for everything she said and did.
- Each time I think, 'Just surrender to the process, go with it.' But I always go off script because I'm desperately trying to have a real moment there and even if it's uncomfortable, I prefer that to doing something fake, because that's what makes me uncomfortable. So I end up doing a character. But I'm a total people pleaser, and it's something that I'm dealing with in therapy. I think that might come as a surprise to people because they project on to me this disaffected persona.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content