The male capacity for turning the negative into a compliment is really alarming.

I went to an amazing school in Brooklyn called St. Anne's that's a really kind of creative hot bed.

Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl, I was trying.

I took "Forever" [by Judy Blume] to the bathroom to read [when I was eight] and then I heard my mom coming so I stuck it under the toilet and went running out. And I went back later to check for it. And it was gone.

But I am a girl with a keen interest in having it all, and what follows are hopeful dispatches from the frontlines of that struggle.

It was only when I started making short films in college and I was looking for girls to play the me-ish parts that I thought, Well, maybe I'm just going to try doing this myself before somebody else comes in and handles it. For a long time my acting was just a marriage of convenience between me and these characters that I was writing.

It's not brave to do something that doesn't scare you.