I didn't want to whisper and giggle about [puberty] anymore. I felt incredibly self-conscious. I felt like I was losing myself, and I was losing who I was. And that really scared me.

My mother died when I was young, and I was filming all the time. I was all over the place. Acting was the one constant.

I've been accused of being pretentious and insufferable, and I don't really know what I can say about that. I never got good grades in school, but I did read the dictionary for fun. That was just the kind of stuff that I liked to do. I can't apologize for that.

The thing is, with writing, it's form or content. You need to write about something interesting or you need to write about it in an interesting way.

I thought I started acting at 5 or 6, it was really when they were interviewing real families for a toothpaste commercial. They interviewed our family.

Puberty was definitely difficult for me. I remember my friends and I looking forward to puberty because it seemed exciting at first. You read Judy Blume and you think, "This is kind of cool." But when it actually started happening to me, I was terrified.

I'm originally from southern California, so I, like, say 'like', like, a lot. I've been trying to scrub any traces of Valley Girl from my speech since I moved to New York, but it's, like, totally way harder than anyone thinks, you know?