I think I enjoy regressing. There's a part of living like that that's really fun. It's like there's no consequences: If you want to drink, you drink; if you're hungover the next day and you're late to work, who cares? There's something very appealing about having no accountability in life, but it's just not a way that I had the energy to live forever.
Jenna FischerIt's so easy to disappear into your character because there isn't all this fuss around you, and we keep a closed set, and closed off to all crew members, even, unless we're cut. A lot of times, you're doing a scene in a movie and there are literally 35 people standing behind the camera all waiting to do their job, but here they have to be off the stage. On The Office, it is very much just the actors, a cameraman and a boom operator, like a real documentary, like we really are being documented.
Jenna FischerI think I am an actress and I'm artistic and I love spontaneity and all of that, but I just decided really early on that if I didn't also try to ground myself I would probably end up like this character of Laura in A Little Help , or like so many young people in Hollywood, sort of go off the rails. So I'm pretty attached to my routines and my grounded ways.
Jenna FischerI think we all spend, sometimes, more time at our jobs than we do at home, and there are people that we wouldn't necessarily choose to spend so much time with. So those irritations and those, just those situations I think are really relatable.
Jenna FischerI don't know if this is true of everyone, but I have this relationship with my parents where, despite however mature or articulate or grown-up I think I've become, as soon as I go home, I turn into this petulant 13-year-old, especially with the tone of my voice.
Jenna FischerGrowing up, I was a very shy, wallflower type. I was not a nerd, but not popular. I was just invisible, like that person you probably didn't know you were in school with.
Jenna FischerI've been really lucky. I didn't have any morning sickness and I've been off work for most of my pregnancy, so I've been able to do things like work out with a trainer and do prenatal yoga and all these things that have kept my body very agile and pain-free.
Jenna FischerI'm a very thoughtful, forward-thinking, planner kind of person. I love Excel spreadsheets and five-year-plans, and I love to review every year how my New Year's resolutions went.
Jenna FischerI know so many amazing actors who don't get work... and then there are a bunch of real duds that work all the time. The industry is just not fair in that way.
Jenna FischerIt makes it really hard to just go to a dinner party because, in my work life, I'm surrounded by the funniest people, ever. I'm really spoiled. I laugh a lot, in my day.
Jenna FischerThat character in Solitary Man is probably most like me in real life: a solid person who has a good head on her shoulders and is very driven and practical, and not afraid to set boundaries. That's sort of my center. I come from the same place as the character in Solitary Man.
Jenna FischerI was definitely raised this way. My folks are very grounded, normal people, and I wasn't raised in the entertainment industry. I just grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, in a very normal family. I wasn't a child actor or anything like that.
Jenna FischerSometimes acting is really cool because it forces you to exercise certain muscles in your personality that you wouldn't normally be called upon in life.
Jenna FischerWith "The Office," they said, "We don't want anyone we recognize, so give us unknown actors," and I think that was the break that I needed. Because I went in and I got the role.
Jenna FischerI loved the domesticity of my life as a struggling actor. When I wasn't going to auditions, I could do things like cook dishes from scratch and take them to parties or be really thoughtful about birthdays and anniversaries.
Jenna FischerI studied theater in college, and I really wanted to be an actress and play a lot of different roles. Then I made landing on a television comedy my main focus.
Jenna FischerI don't have real big aspirations to be a movie star. I would love to be on a long-running hit TV show. You end up playing a defining role.
Jenna FischerI'm very deliberate and I love Excel spreadsheets and I love five-year plans and all that. So it felt really fun to play someone so incredibly different from myself.
Jenna FischerI'm a believer in the parent first, friend second philosophy, and trying to find that balance.
Jenna FischerAs the lead of a movie, you really set the tone off-camera as well, and that's a really big responsibility.
Jenna FischerI'm not prepared for a zombie apocalypse. I need more bottled water, a shotgun, and stronger abs. I have plenty of canner food.
Jenna FischerI had this crazy job, though, when I first got to Los Angeles... I answered this ad in the back of the newspaper to be a telephone psychic, and I did that for two days.
Jenna FischerMy cat, Andy, has been my best buddy since I was 18, and he doesn't care if I'm on a TV show or if I'm red-carpet ready. He just likes it when I'm there.
Jenna FischerIt is part of me; I could definitely be that if I wanted to, I just choose not to. I mean, I am an actress at my core, and I think we're all a little crazy.
Jenna FischerI'm a lover of lists and five-year plans and Excel spreadsheets. Any way that I can have any control over the direction my life is going, I gravitate towards that.
Jenna FischerYou never go into a marriage expecting to get divorced. You go into a marriage expecting it's going to last forever, and you have a lot of ways you dream about the future. You have all these expectations, and then you have to adjust those expectations, and it can be a very unnerving, confusing time.
Jenna FischerI say it was like this accidental research that I did for eight years. I had no idea I was researching the role of my career. But yeah, and there was this one casting director named Allison Jones, and for five years she would call me in every year for a different TV show and she just really was a big supporter of mine.
Jenna FischerI studied theater in college, and I really wanted to be an actress and play a lot of different roles. Then I made landing on a television comedy my main focus. But when you become an actress, you want to play a variety of things.
Jenna FischerI think that there is a tragic misfit at the core of me, and I've just done a lot of work on myself. I love a good self-help book; I've read a ton of them. I love self-help seminars and therapy and all that.
Jenna FischerBe willing to work for nothing in things you think are stupid. Make work for yourself. Make your own luck. Don't complain. Hopefully, the work will find you if you are ready.
Jenna FischerThere's a part of me that wishes I had gone to school and gotten a business degree, because I almost wonder if that wouldn't be more helpful than my theater degree, in some ways.
Jenna FischerI knew I wanted to be an actor, and I didn't necessarily need or want to be famous or a celebrity actor. But I wanted to be somewhere where there would be no ceiling on what I could accomplish, and I felt like if I stayed in St. Louis I might have a really great regional theater career or something, but that I wasn't going to be able to get much further than that. And it felt like New York and L.A. were the two places where you could end up being a TV star or you could end up doing regional theater, which would have been fine as well.
Jenna FischerI spent my whole adolescence, when you just want to be accepted, looking much younger than everyone else.
Jenna FischerThe Farrelly brothers make movies the way you imagine a movie set would be when you're a kid - fun all the time.
Jenna FischerI think that there is a tragic misfit at the core of me, and I've just done a lot of work on myself. I love a good self-help book; I've read a ton of them. I love self-help seminars and therapy and all that. I think that probably, at my core, if I had done no work on myself, I would probably be Laura from The Mysteries Of Laura, but I worked hard to be a more stable person because that's what I wanted out of my life.
Jenna FischerI didn't want to go to college. I wanted to move to Los Angeles right out of high school.
Jenna FischerI'd been out in Los Angeles for about eight years, knocking around. I actually, instead of waiting tables, worked in offices as a temporary assistant.
Jenna FischerSometimes doing a movie for a short period of time is better than committing eight months to a television show.
Jenna FischerI always worry that people are going to be very confused; sometimes timelines get confused with how movies get made. So when I say, "Oh, I made this movie when I was going through a divorce," people think, "Oh no! She's pregnant with a child and divorced?"
Jenna Fischer