I love acting in the theater,but I'm fascinated with acting on film. If it's a film or a play or whatever, if the writing is good and you really feel passionate about it, you just can't lose. You'll grow from it. Whether it's a success or not is neither here nor there; you're going to grow as an artist from this experience.

When you get to really involve yourself with a piece [script] and the other people and you get to feel like it's a community and you're all building something together, it helps me to produce better work, I think. And there's an exhaustion that happens on a film set - an exhaustion that translates into a relaxation and helps me to live in the moment, in the performance I'm giving and what's happening around me.

But at the same time, my parents always encouraged my brother and me to be happy with what we were doing. My parents were athletes in high school; my mom and my dad were the stars of the basketball team, but they never pushed my brother and me to be anything we didn't want to be.

Make sure that you always follow your heart and your gut, and let yourself be who you want to be, and who you know you are. And don't let anyone steal your joy.

Musical auditions are always the worst because you have to sing and act, and that's so stressful.

In a play, you can adjust your performance to audience reaction, but in a film it's like you're trapped in a bad dream watching yourself act and you're in the audience

My mother's side of the family is Methodist, which is how I was raised. It was conservative in that I had strong values - sitting down and eating with the family every day, listening to authority and going to church every week and having perfect attendance at Sunday school.