My career is inexplicable to me. So far I've just been not getting fired despite being myself.

I always drastically changed my look for each role. It's gotten a little tedious in real life, also, because there's no hiding.

Only when you get into TV and film, do people really want you to be a 'specialist'.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Don't teach a man to fish and you feed yourself. He's a grown man, fishing's not that hard.

I've never seen a theater community to rival that of Chicago. Neither New York nor L.A. has the raw talent or integrity that Chicago theater has, and I think it's because Chicago doesn't have Broadway or the film and TV business to distract it.

When I was in fourth grade, we were learning vocabulary words, and the word nonconformist came up. The teacher said, "It's somebody who whatever everybody is doing, they do the opposite." I remember raising my hand and saying, "Mrs. Christiansen, I would like to be a nonconformist."

Follow your gut, make a choice, and throw yourself into it. If you make a mistake, then you have merely afforded yourself a valuable lesson.