The amazing thing about working on new platforms is that there is a great deal of excitement. You know, these things - they're brand new. They're trying to figure it out. And so if you're a show that they're supporting, they're going to put a tremendous amount of energy behind you. They're open to new ideas, new ways of promoting a show, and I think that feels really exciting, because network TV sort of feels like a formula. They give you a couple of weeks, and if it works, it works, and if it doesn't, you're most likely going to get cancelled.
The nice thing about a documentary, I think, is that so much of it is editing, too. You sort of get to keep making decisions. It's not as much like when you do a narrative, fictional piece, and you have a certain number of shooting days, and you're like, "Well, that's what it is." You can continue to seek out more photographs or try to find more footage. The genre gives you the ability to keep working on it, which is great for a first-time director.
If you just look at the number of roles for women versus the number of roles for men in any given film, there are always far more roles for men. That's always been true. When I went to college, I went to Julliard. At that time - and I don't know if this is still true - they always selected fewer women than men for the program, because there were so few roles for women in plays. That was sort of acknowledgment for me of the fact that writers write more roles for men than they do for women.
As an actor, you are sort of only in charge of yourself. All you can really control is your performance. You don't know what they're going to do with it in the editing room, what they're going to cut out, which take they're going to use. You know, your control is very limited. As a director, it's ultimately your piece. You have a lot more responsibility, but you also have a lot more creative control. It's scary, but also liberating in a way.
I think that initially all I wanted to do was work as an actress, and then, as I started to work more consistently, you start to maybe want to challenge yourself in different ways, so I think it's something that developed over time - this desire to direct and also to produce. I think as you watch other actresses do it so successfully and so gracefully, you're like, I think that would be fun! It's definitely something that has become more of a priority for me.
I would say 99 percent of the time, you're probably attracted to the other person because it is repairing something that's a little broken in yourself. When you're getting into the relationship, whether that becomes an impediment or the rocket fuel, that's the choice of the person who's in it.
I remember someone said to me, "Beware of instant chemistry with people, because a lot of time it's the recognition of something familiar," and for people who have a habit of getting into unhealthy relationships, that's usually a bad thing.
Accept your failure, move on, and don't torture yourself.
Bitterness doesn't serve you any good. And it really tells you more about how you feel about yourself than anything you feel about your friends.
I try to not go over things from the past. Learn your lessons and then let it go.
Rather than just becoming embittered by your friends' success, I think it can motivate you.
It's sometimes hard to accept that the people you love and feel the closest to may have different dreams and goals from yours, and those are valid. And I've felt that way: accepting people's differences and recognizing them as valid choices even if they're different from your own.
There's no right one way to go through life.
I also think the more experienced you get as an actor, you start to hear the conversations about why people get cast and not cast, sometimes it's so arbitrary. They decided the moment you walked in the door. And there's nothing you could have done to sway them, even if you'd the greatest performance of all time.
Your agents and your managers will always say stuff to you like, "It's really important to make a good first impression on a casting director. And even though you didn't get that job, because you did well that means they'll keep bringing you back in." But when you really just need a job to pay your rent, that stops being very consoling.
When you only hang out with performers, you start to feel like movies and TV and comedy is everything. Especially being in LA, where it feels like you walk into a coffee shop and you see 15 laptops with screenplays being written.
I always try to have a bigger picture view of my career. But that didn't mean that I didn't cry about not getting jobs.
There's no way to know what's going to happen.
I try to have a very well-rounded group of friends that did a lot of different things and weren't just performers. Because I feel like there's both less feeling of competitiveness, and it put my own career in perspective.
I also have learned as an actor, this ties in the principles of improv, sometimes someone gives a piece of instruction and my first reaction is "I don't want to do that." I've always learned that every time I just say yes and go for it something happens. Whether it's what the intent of the direction was or not or something new happens. It's just remaining open to other people's ideas.
It is important to stop being critical and judging ideas as good or bad because I think if somebody doesn't have a lot of experience you worry their idea is going to be bad, it's not going to be good enough, if not going to be active enough and so you can start to think critically about people's suggestions or what they bring to it but once you get out of that and think whatever they come up with is the right thing right now and so I'm just going to build on it just makes everything so much easier and better.
I think we are used to being critical and evaluating ideas.
Without agreement you just have people arguing.
I think that it is important to establish a world of place for the characters in improv and there is nothing to be gained from disagreeing about that. So you have to establish the principle that if some person establishes one thing we're all going to go along with it and that we are all building from it.
I think in theater it demands that you say the same words every night and make it feel fresh and new. Improv demands that you be operating at the highest level of your creativity intelligence. So these two skills are both very important but I've seen people who are very skilled at one area struggle with the other. Either improvisers feel constrained by having to say the same thing over and over again or people who are really good at doing scripted work feel intimidated and exposed doing improvisation.
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