I had this aunt who had a career and traveled. She'd say things like, "When you go to college, I think we should go scuba diving in the summer. The scuba diving in Portugal is fabulous." And I'd be like, "Portugal! Holy cats!".

I just started asking my friends if they had noticed. None of them - feminists, mothers, daughters - noticed until I pointed it out. Then I decided to bring it up within the industry. I knew a lot of people, so I'd say, "Have you ever noticed how few female characters there are in kids movies?" when I met a director, a producer, whatever. And they said, "Oh, but that's not true anymore."

I'm such a wuss. But I know that The Exorcist [1973] is one of the best and most famous of [horor movies].

My point was the world is missing female characters. A lot of times there is one female character, maybe even a cool one, maybe even an important one. But where are all the rest?

When it came time for college, I told my parents I was going to major in acting. And they were so removed from anything to do with show business - my dad built our house and my mom grew our food.

This is really funny, but we did a study of the occupations of female characters on TV, and there are so many female forensic scientists on TV because of all the CSI shows and Bones and whatever. I don't have to lobby anybody to add more female forensic scientists as role models. There's plenty.In real life, the people going into that field now are something like two-thirds women.

I watched a lot of series. I didn't watch a lot of movies on TV. But I watched Gilligan's Island and Star Trek and all that stuff.