When I was a kid, I was obsessed with this idea of opening a restaurant back in Indiana on a little pond. The guests would order their dinner and then take a little boat out with a colored flag on the front of it. When the matching color of the flag on their boat went up on a flag pole, their dinner was ready!

When you have a director who has work you can identify from the past, it gives you some reference point as to what their interpretation of the story might be, and how that might jibe, right or wrong, with how you see it. But with a first-time director, you don't really know where you're at.

You don't get to pick your partners in families; you get assigned a seat at the table.

If a woman has one cat, it will invariably turn into 20.

I like complicated characters.

Everybody's family has problems.

I don't consider a lot of actors that I really admire movie stars.