You always have to avoid working for the sake of putting yourself out there.
I've never had a MySpace or a Facebook page. I avoid that entirely.
My parents never got carried away with the extraneous elements of being in the business.
I would be a terrible person to be in a relationship with because I'm either sleeping or at the theater.
The notion of self-care for people who have hundreds of millions of dollars, it doesn't seem like a radical thing.
I'm not a stand-up comedian. I'm not an improv person or anything, but I've always been a fan of that stuff.
I went to New York University to study experimental theatre in 2006 and was there pretty consistently until 2011.
It was kind of good that I wasn't doing the Hollywood high life and stuff like that when I was 18, 19, 20, 21.
What attracted me to New York was there was an anonymity that I couldn't always have in Los Angeles, and it was easier to blend in there. The more successful you are, the less you are able to do that.
Having that college experience and a social life that didn't revolve around Hollywood was absolutely crucial.
I've done some really off-the-wall stuff and stuff that people might not expect. That's one way to work through people's expectations of you.
My parents were both born in Birmingham, Alabama, and come from large Catholic families with lots of Michaels, Marks, and Patricks, so they wanted to choose two names that I don't think you could find anywhere else in the family tree: Haley and Joel.
My mom teaches sixth grade and also taught first grade at one point. She's into dressing up and costumes and designing her own curriculum that way. She stayed home for about eight years with me and my sister when we were young before going back to teaching, so we had a lot of time with her. She taught us to read really early.
I had a flip phone until I was 25, and I didn't use social media until that age, either.
With my dad coming from a theatre tradition, there was a lot of preparation before auditions. Not just in terms of saying the lines correctly but a process of entering into what it was all about.
A film like 'The Sixth Sense' burns an image of who you are into people's minds.
What I like least about acting is that when you're only in one place, you're missing the other part of life.
I try to steer away from doing something that's just commercial instead of sticking to a good script.
When I was five, I went on my first audition. It was for a Pizza Hut commercial.
One challenge in this industry is that you adopt a certain look for a movie, and then people don't get to see the movie for a year!
