People ask me what the appeal of 'True Blood' is and I think there are so many answers to that question, but I think that when there is so much excitement for what you do there is no way that that doesn't become palpable and comes shooting out like bullets.

As an actor, you want as much variety as you can muster up. Otherwise you just keep playing the same chord over and over again.

I try to keep things as varied as possible in my career, and after playing something as fun and over the top as Maryann on 'True Blood,' I wanted to find something antithetical to that.

At one point I had a stretch where it was working on 'In Treatment,' then 'True Blood,' then 'Durham County,' then 'True Blood,' then 'In Treatment' again. If I didn't have that little dose of 'True Blood' in the middle, I might have lost my mind.

In this age of vampires, what I love about 'True Blood' the most is that it's a post-modern take on it. 'Sookie Stackhouse' series author Charlaine Harris and 'True Blood' creator Alan Ball turned that whole mythology upside-down... It's not just about vampires. It's about a lot of different things.

Pears are my favorite fruit! Reminds me of childhood.

I've never had a plan. You look for different actors you want to work with or different subjects you want to explore, or sometimes it's just a momentary fancy.