I think it's necessary to identify with anything - with any character you play, there's got to be something in common, so you can link up to that person, even if it's like one tiny thing. But it's equally fun to play somebody completely different, and trying to find what that thing is to make it.

I was a Russian dancer in my elementary school production of Fiddler on the Roof when I was in third grade or fourth grade. I was one of the younger kids accepted into the play, and the plays were pretty impressive, let me say.

I really unfortunately don't have tons of hilarious Sundance stories, because really I am not the biggest fan of hanging out, but the reason why is because I never go see other people's movies and I think that's the way to do it.

'Party Down' is the most fun I've ever had working in my life. We shoot 10-episode seasons and we shoot it in 10 weeks, so it's very brief: 4-day episode shoots. You never get sick of anybody, and it never feels like a drag. It's way, way, way too short.

Everybody hangs out with everybody, which is very strange for a cast this large and this young. We're all cool and down to earth and not caught up in this maniacal business at all.... Everybody really, really likes everybody else.

It's a different thing with cable TV. You don't have to have your characters be lovely again by the end of the episode. And in this era of the male antiheroes on cable TV, you don't even need to make them likable; you just need to make them compelling. As opposed to film, where it's still those basic tropes of good versus evil. But for women, I don't think that has been widely seen yet.

I feel lucky because most of my friends aren't married. So I don't feel that, 'oh, step on it, you're thirty.'