Quotes

If I had criteria, it would just be that I want to play active people who can solve problems, not people who have things thrust in their lap and need somebody to solve their problems for them.

How you choose to present yourself to the world shows what's meaningful to you - and what you want others to think is meaningful to you.

As a viewer, I'm personally less interested in the damaged, white, middle-class male figuring out his dreams and more interested in maybe an underdog figuring out how they're going to survive in a world that doesn't necessarily invite them in.

I dream of not having access to technology. I think it's a very wonderful time that we have found ourselves in, in terms of access to information, but alone time is better for some personalities than others. And I would very gladly give it up. I think I'd do very well.

I loved the DOS games, Super Nintendo. And I have a very addictive personality, so I recognize now that I just can't engage in that kind of stuff because I'll never stop. So I no longer play any games.

It was really unusual to go from being in university for four years to all of a sudden acting every day. I'd never been able to do it exclusively like that. It was always sort of like my secret thing that I did privately.

I went to theater school, and if I spent time with one school of thought in this whole acting game, it's the Meisner approach of improvise-based acting. This does not mean that you improvise your acting, but that you focus on the other person.

I'm not a runner, and I always dreamed about just throwing on my sneakers and really knocking everyone's socks off with my joy of traversing the world by foot.

I wanted to be Beetlejuice. I watched nonstop 'Beetlejuice' and 'The Princess Bride' growing up.

I'm probably less volatile and tempestuous than a lot of Aries, but I think I'm probably quite loud and outgoing and passionate. Maybe a bit difficult or stubborn.

I just think 'Broad City' - Comedy Central's answer to 'Girls' - is the best thing that's been put on television in years. It's amazing.

I modeled for a little while in college. I was desperate to travel, and I got scouted, and they wanted me to go to Paris and London for six months. And I discovered that I hated it. I didn't like the expectation to be pretty all the time.

I was imagining a long life of being a stone cold loser. Then I got a job, which was really nice, then I got a great agent, a great manager, which was really nice. I was doing a lot of set ups, and, you know, I got to start working in L.A.

I think - more than anything, I think I'd really like to start producing and be in charge of the stuff that I want to see in the world and the stuff that interests me.

I sat at the popular table, but I always felt really geeky.

Our relationships with our computers are almost sexual, they're so close. They're just such a huge part of our lives.

I've just sort of jumped into relationships and moved in with people way too soon.

I do a lot of thrifting, but I don't go shopping in a concerted way very often. I find things by accident that I can't talk myself out of, like armadillo purses.

I've been lucky to work consistently on women who I think are interesting, fleshed out, and strong and active participants in their destiny.

I just like the insides of things and finding ways into microscopic worlds. There's also an element of control, taking things apart and putting them back together. It's a very tedious task. You can be alone and create a world for yourself.

I'm always surprised when actors say they don't like sex scenes. It's like a freebie. It's fun to make out with someone. So yes, thumbs up on that.

I think Julianne Moore is the most radiantly beautiful human being and isn't messing with nature too much. She seems like a woman who treats her body like a temple. I cannot relate to that!

'Breathe In' was such a big deal for me. It was my first anything. Before that, I was going through 'Backstage Magazine' and applying for student films.

I've been really lucky that I've been exposed to a lot of lovely, talented people who are not jerks, and I would like to continue that streak.

Feminism is rooted in racial rights and gender rights, and all of those things intersect, and to say that that's not something you can stand behind - it confuses me. I think it's a really great word.

I have taxidermy pets that are very close to me. I have a little lizard with a head that comes on and off that I call Nicolas Cage because his face is long. And I have a big diamondback rattlesnake called Rufus, and I have some rats in jars and stuff.

I wear a lot of boyish stuff, but I prefer to throw a fur coat on top just for the hell of it.

The first two or three movies I did, I'd be around famous co-stars and totally pretend like I didn't care, but inside, I was shaking. I've been weaning myself off that.

I don't just act to pay my rent. I really like doing it, so I get frustrated when I don't get to do it all the time, so short films are a really great way to be doing it and working with your friends, working on smaller, more specific things without limiting yourself in other ways.

I'm really aware of the conversations that surround young actresses in Hollywood. I always get myself into a hole with these conversations, and I get weirdly quoted, and I sound militant and like I'm not thankful at all, and I'm so thankful of everything that's happening. But I'm an active observer of the machinations of this world.

I always imagined that magically, at some point, I would settle into this very easy and refined sophistication, but it turns out that who you are at eleven is pretty much who you are at 27, so I don't know how much I've learned over the years.

I fall in love with something and wear it every day until it's destroyed. My most treasured items have a very short shelf life because I love them too much.

I love Thanksgiving. In Canada, we don't really have a lot of history with Thanksgiving, and it's a holiday devoted to food, and that warms the cockles of my being.

I'm getting rid of this idea that you want people to like you. I'm making decisions on what feels right to me. To act in a more carnal way. That's my challenge.

[sex and nudity] It's pretty hard, as a woman, to find a movie where some sex and nudity isn't written in, at least in early drafts of a script.

A weird thing about being an actress is that shooting movies doesn't feel like watching movies. It feels like being in a warehouse.

It continues to be my experience that the people who get the most work are the coolest people. They're the people you want to be around.

[playing engaging characters] You can make a beautiful, airtight world that's fascinating to look at, but it's not interesting unless you have a character that's trying to achieve something under the circumstances of that world. It's harder to play a wacky girlfriend whose journey you just don't understand. Or give a sh*t about.

[sex scenes] I don't find sex scenes that awkward. It's usually pretty fun to make out with someone so I don't mind.

[favorite sex scene being Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in Don't Look Now (1973)] it flashes between getting dressed and these two bodies in bed, having really honest, messy sex.