Film and TV is a very hard profession to enter into if you don't have the ability to take a long period of time without making money so you can write, direct or raise financing, or work your way up, often with unpaid internships. It's hard to get into without a lot of connections. You end up with a lot of white people from privilege making films. So we're seeing a lot of the same kinds of stories.

I've always known that I've wanted to write, but I always saw myself doing that in the context of something other than film, so it was a really beautiful and kind of perfect moment in my life when I realized that I could combine this idea of wanting to write and tell my own stories with the environment I had grown up in and knew well - that I could make film as opposed to writing being a departure from what I knew.

I was concerned about that, because I've always been so specific about doing independent films, but I've never done anything that's so genuinely and ridiculously fun. And that's a great thing, for me to discover that that's possible.

Lately I did a film called All I Want for Christmas and it was well received. This gave me a new point of view and a new respect for my work as an actress.

Plus, doing a zombie movie is quite liberating. It's fun not to take myself seriously all the time.

I think what I've learned most from being an actress is that there's no method. That you have to invent this process over and over and over again, depending on who you're working with and what you're doing.

AIDS is a global problem and there should be a global solution found by the entire international community. It is really scary to see and imagine our world fall into pieces because we refuse to share and put in the common vestiges of our civilizations.