I think there's something really freeing about improv, that it's a collective, creative, in-the-moment piece. That's really exciting and really frustrating, because it's there and gone. There's an amazing interaction with the audience that happens because they are very much another scene partner. How they respond determines the kinds of stories we tell.

I think there's something really freeing about improv, that it's a collective, creative, in-the-moment piece. That's really exciting and really frustrating, because it's there and gone. There's an amazing interaction with the audience that happens because they are very much another scene partner. How they respond determines the kinds of stories we tell.

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.

As a kid, I wanted to be a boy because I equated that with strength. There's a problem with that. It's only growing into my own womanhood that I realize how warped that is that I was attributing strength to male qualities.

I'm always interested in are stories that challenge people.

My favorite actor on the planet is Gena Rowlands and she plays women who, to me, somehow defy gender. They are women, they are feminine, they are masculine, they are everything. There's something exciting about that. I don't know how to articulate it exactly. I guess it's busting out of the archetypes a little bit and not feeling restricted.

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.