I was a boy in the ads I did as a child. My sister was the girl, and I was the boy. I had short hair and I was in overalls and I was giving flowers to my sister Daisy, who fit their model of what a girl was supposed to look like.

I think if I had lived back in Salem, I would have been burned at the stake

I was 13. And on my own for about 10 months, but those were long months. My stepdad wanted me out of his hair and tried to put me in a home, a hospital kind of place for kids with drug problems, which I absolutely did not belong in. So I left that place and struck out on my own...

Why should I downplay myself to make someone else more comfortable?

It wasn't that I was shy to go out with him, I just didn't want people with preconceived notions to assume anything about why we were together. I was pretty careful for a while.

I have great luck. I'm used to people dying and going away. Not used to it exactly - but I expect it. Like, whenever people go off on a trip, I save their phone messages because I think they might die.

You have to be at the forefront of culture to create art, which they call "product," and Hollywood is not. It's this very old business model, which I think is dying in a lot of ways.