I 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.

I'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.

I 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.

With "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.

I still get nervous when I have a lot of makeup on, a big hairdo, and a dress.

I'm not one to air my dirty laundry for the whole world.

I 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.