The American story is a story of great moments and dreadful moments.

You give up a lot when you enter the years of parenting. It's a sacrifice.

Life is not just one dark moment after another.

My grandfather was from outside of Moscow, and my grandmother, although some of her family were French, was from Odessa. They met as immigrants in New York in the early '20s. My mother's family came over from Ireland generations ago.

That's an important lesson for me, to not qualify my experience against somebody else's. My experience is the experience that I wanted to have, and have created for myself, but it doesn't make me any more deserving than anybody else; or less.

I think with the smaller-scale projects, the burden for success falls more squarely on the shoulders of the actors and the director and the script.

By the time I had finished my studies at St. Paul's School, I knew I wanted to be an actor.