I could have gone to the gym for three hours a day and bought into all that, but I just wasn't interested.

At school I was always trying to con my teachers into letting me act out book reports instead of writing them.

What I hope in my ideal world is that with each project, I'll either get to work with a really great script that would force me to grow, or work with a really great actor who will make me better.

When you're dying, you're liberated to do what you want to do. You give yourself permission. I think everyone's experience with a terminal disease is so deeply personal and unique to the person, the context in which they're living and the relationships that they have.

I think everybody handles things very differently and you can conjecture, but until you're put in that situation, you really don't know.

I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side.

I know that actors and actresses have a great reputation for being very, very selfish, and in some cases, that's very true. But in the theater I find it doesn't help you to be selfish. You sort of have to be selfless in the theater, and the more selfless you are - that doesn't mean don't take care of yourself - but the more you sort of surrender to the work, I find, the better the work is. That's just my experience.