[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.

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.

In terms of sexual orientation I don't really feel I've changed ... I'd been with men all my life, and I'd never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn't seem so strange. I'm just a woman in love with another woman.

Nancy Reagan would just run up to these kids [with really painful disabilities and deformities] and hold them and pick them up... because I think she felt so judged all the time and she felt so unlovable.

And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people its not, but for me its a choice, and you dont get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if its a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesnt matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.

Not to bash Los Angeles, but there is always a feeling in LA of where your stock is. Are you the top of the heap at the moment or do you have the blockbuster, did you get cast in that thing?

In New York - not to say New York isn't a competitive place - but there's much more of a sense of, we're all here and some of us are up and some of us are down and some of us are in the middle, but we have a longer view of history and how it works, rather than just this week.