People go to the cinema to be moved; they wanna laugh, they wanna cry, they wanna feel something deeply, especially if they're not feeling deeply in their own lives.

I feel like developing the muscle of my imagination became a way to survive reality.

I think the first thing I thought when I got out to L.A. was just: Oh, if I want to act, I have to find a different way to go about it because the parts for girls are as dispiriting as the banking jobs. You have to really be willing to invent, I guess, a different path for yourself.

It doesn't happen all the time, but in the moments where you really lose yourself and you fall into this character, it's like time travel.

I think you get to see, through the different cult members, why people are attracted to a group like this. Everyone is there for a different reason and from a different background. That was part of what was interesting for us, in researching cults and exploring it. A lot of this happens in California.

So writing became a way to get to act in things that I thought were meaningful, and hopefully write stronger roles for other women.

Being a waitress can be a very brutal job sometimes, and I remember during the training, the person said to me, "The redder the lips, the better the tips," and that was like the only advice she gave me.