I really never thought I was that good at film. And honestly still don't. My strength is language. My background is monologues and a certain kind of Brechtian spin on theater.
I was about 29 or 30, and I started writing monologues for myself. I felt I got more immediate encouragement from that than I ever had in acting.
In third or fourth grade, I loved to sign stories and monologues.
I went to NYU drama school, so I was a very serious actress. I used to do monologues with a Southern accent, and I was really into drama and drama school. And then, in my last year of drama school, I did a comedy show, and the show became a big hit on campus.
I remember writing monologues and one-act plays and stuff in high school. I had a project in English that was just a short book of limericks. It was so weird. I enjoyed the challenge and rhyme of it. I was always putting on plays and stuff.
All the other characters are so well-rounded, and it's just frustrating because female characters aren't. It's not that they're badly written, they're just underwritten. They have no internal monologues; they could be absolutely anyone.
I've written a screenplay that is a series of monologues and songs; they form this sort of human tapestry across time and place. The form is strange, but I find it really fascinating.
I had been doing summer stock every summer while I was in college. We did a showcase, like most good conservatories do - monologues and things that agents and casting directors come to see. From that I got an agent.
It was been an absolute joy being in 'The Vagina Monologues' for so many years. I think the play is truly special.
One-way monologues through the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia don't have much street cred with China's Internet generation, to be honest.
