I spent my whole adolescence, when you just want to be accepted, looking much younger than everyone else.

It'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.

My 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.

It 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.

I'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.

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.

That 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.