Madam C.J. Walker was born in 1867, two years after the civil war ended. She was a daughter of a slave. She had no formal education. Both her parents died by the time she was seven. Yet, by the time she died in 1919 at age 51, she was one of the most successful businesswomen America had ever seen.
The biggest misconception people have about me is that when they see how young I am, they think, 'Oh, this guy must have always wanted to be in politics; his parents must have been politically connected.' I'm a finance major and always intended to go into business.
But HBO is less interested in how many people are watching than in how much the people who are watching are liking the show. They didn't set up their business model to make writers happy. It's just a nice unintended consequence.
My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated.
When I lived in Baltimore, I would come down fairly often to go to the Hirshhorn, and one of my good friends from high school went to Georgetown. I actually ended up going to Annapolis a lot. I had a car, and it was such a serene place to drive.
I ended up going to college for visual arts but moved up to New York after I graduated from college in 2006 and started going gung ho to the Upright Citizens Brigade, and I realized that that was what I was really interested in and what I really wanted to do.
Whenever I am acting, it's everything, you know. If I'm researching a role, I'm completely consumed in that and, between action and cut, I live in this suspended time.
I make decisions all day, so it's nice for a woman like me to go to dinner and have the man take the menu and say, 'Let me order.' Other women would be offended by that, but I'm like, 'Good. Because I can't make one more decision today.' I want someone to rub my feet without being asked.