I think it's unhealthy to listen to what people say. My dad used to always say, "Don't believe in your own hype!" I was confused at the time: "Dad, there is no hype on me." But now I understand what he was saying. If someone says, "I think you're amazing" and someone says, "I think you're awful," I would like to have the same reaction to both, to be confident and calm enough to be able to take both of those and not be affected by either.

I'm not afraid of doing anything. I have no fear. It's made me pretty confident in that I can have a plane flown over my head or I can go head-to-head with an alligator or with a python, and it's all okay and it's so fun.

I don't think about competition. I am definitely attracted to not just playing a regular character - I don't know there's any such thing as "regular. In American Crime, I get to play a runaway who's living with her pimp in North Carolina and she's a prostitute, but she's a victim of human trafficking because she's under 18. I like those roles. That's what I wanted; I wanted to play someone that was a challenge.

I would love to be considered Zen, but I'm not sure that I am. Maybe just with animals and babies and in tough situations.

I think the best things happen when you just let go and see what comes in. I find that that's always the most satisfying.

My one piece of advice to anyone trying to do acting - this would just be to keep going. It sounds really basic, but I went to 121 auditions my first year in L.A. That is no exaggeration, because I keep lists - I know it's a little psychotic - of every audition that I have ever been to. I went to 121 auditions and I got none. But who cares?

You'd think that it was really hard for me to turn into North Carolina prostitute, but I didn't think of her like that. I just thought there were a lot of similarities. She loves art and she loves beautiful things, and in that regard, she's a girl, I'm a girl. We love beautiful things, we want adventure, we just want to be loved. She just really wants a family and to be safe. I think everyone wants that. I just came from it from that point of view rather than, "Oh, this girl is so different from me. How on Earth am I going to play her?"