There are a lot of myths about gay people.

My mother was a failed actress, but that was our bread and butter - what we loved most to do was to go to the theater and talk about it and dissect it and understand it.

I do tend to be an analyzer. I'm an old English major from way back, so I do have fun tearing apart texts and trying to find the hidden secrets and the subtexts in there.

I did an after-school special as my first big thing. It was starring Butterfly McQueen. She was the name. But the real star of it was Robbie Rist, who was that little blond kid who looked like John Denver.

[My mother] worked in the Seagram's Building; it's kind of an iconic '60s skyscraper on a floor so high that your ears popped. And all the women - the whole thing was so very Mad Men, very glamorous.

What was really great with Eleanor Roosevelt - I mean, of course, we all have this stereotypical, really satirical almost, version of how she speaks. What was really interesting to me was I found various radio and TV appearances of hers, but there was one talk show that I saw her on; she was the only woman, it was all men. They were talking about policy - I think it was after she was First Lady. I think it was more in the U.N. days.

Nancy Reagan, when presented with kids with really painful disabilities and deformities, she was completely undaunted.