My mom grew up in poverty in Oklahoma - like Dust Bowl, nine people in one room kind of place - and the way she got out of poverty was through education. My dad grew up without a dad, with very little and he also made his way out through education.

But I'll never be one of those women who feel that they always have to wear earrings and aren't properly dressed without them.

I don't think that because you are a perfectionist that that makes you necessarily automatically unlikable.

Well, you can't be trying to achieve success of any kind in this business without accepting that there's going to be a flip side to it.

I always, always meant to be on stage. I only ended up even auditioning for television and movies because I was understudying a Turgenev play on Broadway and was so broke that, when I got a mini-series, I had to take it and was so ashamed because I was such a snob.

I've always been attracted to humor and funny people in general. It's a joy to make people laugh, but it's not as fun as laughing yourself.

I remember, my mom didn't have any help, so if she needed to be somewhere after school, we'd just go down to the neighbors' and she'd give us a snack and make sure we did our homework. There weren't any latchkey kids.