I started out as a dancer as a kid; I've been dancing since I was 4. So performing was always part of what I was. I don't know if it I enjoyed the response I got from people or if I liked having an audience, but there's something in me that wanted to perform.

Have fun, be yourself, enjoy life and stay positive.

The most bizarre demographics come up to me. Men in their 50s come up to me and are like, "Alison is my favorite. I hated her at first, and now I love her." I don't know what that says about people's psychology.

John Cassavetes' films have really altered the way I see film and acting and storytelling and emotion and love, so I see acting as this incredible revealing of human nature and this means of telling our story, sharing our voice with the world. That's what acting is for me. It allows for people to experience things through the character, through the story.

It's a daunting thing to be playing a real person and to have contact with her and meet her and be in her circle a little bit. It's an odd thing. There's so much responsibility to tell the story honestly and truthfully, and at the same time, you start to develop a friendship with this person - or I did.

I find comedy to be really scary, because it can go so wrong so easily, and the margin for error is so huge - and I guess that's what makes it funny, that tension.

Clothing and makeup and hair and all of that so much indicates the kind of person you are inside and the person you are presenting on the outside. Sometimes they are in conflict, and sometimes they are the same. That psychology of the exterior informing the interior is just so interesting.