We realized that there's a great need in many churches to use the power of the media...There are a lot of different ways to preach. You can preach by praising. You can preach by preaching sermons. You can preach by just giving someone food when they're hungry. There are people who will never darken a church door but they will come to see a play.

I was doing big roles and, yeah, everything was going great. In the midst of all that, I guess I had already become common in the sense that I became formed into what the world wanted me to be. My desires and my goals were (identified) by the world - the things that would make me (successful) in the sight of the world and would give me a status that I thought was security.

You get typecast. You have to find a niche in this business. So, the roles that I got cast in were the Latina or the Italian spitfires. The woman with a passion and the woman who didn't want to listen to anyone, did everything her own way, very self-willed.

We realized that there's a great need in many churches to use the power of the media...There are a lot of different ways to preach. You can preach by praising. You can preach by preaching sermons. You can preach by just giving someone food when they're hungry. There are people who will never darken a church door but they will come to see a play.

I got the bad press and the blogging and the email threats because people really didn't understand. They thought I was anti-gay. That's not true at all. My spiritual mom has a gay son. Even he was telling his friends "No, that's not true. She's so accepting of me." That doesn't mean I accept his lifestyle. It means I accept him as a human person and as a creation of God and a person of value.

I feel like God has moved me into a different way of doing things. I teach basic on-camera acting class called Acting 101...In my classroom, the students get every ounce of encouragement and craft and anything I'm able to give them.We have some rules. We don't take the name of The Lord in vain. We don't use foul language when we mess up on camera...There's a climate of safety...They feel very protected.

When you hit the things that are relevant to the next generation, - it's a way for young people to feel like "Somebody understands me. Church is not irrelevant. I feel that my hurts are being addressed. Things that I am concerned about are being talked about."