The way I survived growing up in Jersey City was by being funny. It wasn't by being tough. Nobody thought of me as a tough kid, except for the kids I beat up.

I think humans are stupid. We fight and kill each other. I think that's dumb. Aliens would be smarter than that and wouldn't approach things on that level. I can't really fathom it being a negative thing for aliens to visit.

I've never really been about looking good - I'm just bad at that stuff.

I'd done two years' worth of extra work, and all my friends who I would go on auditions with went to school for acting. These were kids who knew when they were 14 years old that this was what they wanted to do with their lives, and they prepared for it, and they're getting canned at every audition.

The egos in this industry are incredibly vulnerable and everybody's afraid to wipe out. So everybody plays it safe and everybody tells everybody else how great they are.

At school, I was this tomboy kid who just loved to hang out with her friends and learn curse words, trying to fit in with the cool kids and defending all the kids who got picked on.

I think empathy is a beautiful thing. I think that's the power of film though. We have one of the most powerful, one of the greatest communicative tools known to man.