I was up at Big Sur with Christopher Reeve and Christine Lahti, doing this woman in a big fat-suit - Mrs. Bassett in Tennessee Williams' Summer And Smoke - and my husband was in the show too, playing Lahti's fiancée. Every night he'd be proposing to beautiful Christine Lahti, and I'd barrel onstage in this fat-suit. I hated it! But I did it, because by then I knew that that was my casting.

Maybe because All About Steve is about offbeat people, viewers don't want them to be heroes. There is something archetypal in us that we like a leading lady, we like a leading man, and we like people with my features to get killed. Maybe that's why the reviews were so severe - because good Lord, I've seen much worse films!

Tone is a very difficult thing. You can't write tone, I don't think. You can try - you certainly try. I write too, so I know I'm trying desperately to communicate to whoever's going to direct my pieces, the way I see the humor. But it's very difficult.

I never have broken up in comedy, ever. There's something about me that I just don't break on camera - maybe because I'm just so cheap, and I know how expensive it is to shoot - but I broke on Sordid Lives, and I broke on The Office. Those are the only two times in my life.

I like the line leading up to that: "I made your daughter the lead dancer, and you're not committed!" It's how people in their own little narrow worlds get so bent out of shape over the silliest things. I've seen it all my life, especially growing up in the South - the tempest in a teapot.

One friend said, "Donnie Darko movie was weird!" And I thought, "Hmm. I don't think we're as good of friends as I thought." It's not like I disliked him for it; it just meant we weren't on the same page I thought we were. Because I can't imagine watching that film and not being moved to tears.

I grew up around people, so I know 'em, and I do like playin' 'em. I'm not religious, but I am kind of a spiritual fanatic, so maybe I understand them in that way.