People remember the last thing you did.
Ari Graynor
I did babysit a little bit when I was young. I prefer babysitting for babies. I always loved babies. I was not as great with kids that wanted to be entertained and that wanted to talk.
I'm a little quirky, a little offbeat, and I'm certainly not a classic beauty.
I think 'Nick and Norah' was a huge deal for me. It was my first foray into the studio world, and that character was such a gift.
The Bowery Hotel is always a great place to meet people for drinks. It's so cozy in there, especially in the late fall and winter.
I went through a little hippy dippy program at Brandeis and was bat mizvahed by the rabbi who married my parents. We celebrated the High Holidays and had the traditional Rosh Hashanah dinner.
I prefer situational or character-based humor to gross-out gags and comedic set pieces.
I've had curly hair for years, and I never wore it curly. I didn't know what to do with it.
I'm such a theater geek. Most of my friends are in this community, and it's really important for me to keep doing it. It takes the ego out of acting, whereas movies tend to involve it.
You know what no one tells you about driving a truck? You are driving a truck. There are only side mirrors, and it does not handle like a Prius.
When I was a kid, I did dial the 900 numbers out of curiosity, but I was such a goodie-two-shoes that I immediately hung up because I didn't want it showing up on the bill.
I was a precocious only child, and then I went through a fat, awkward stage for several years, so I learned to fall back on my humor and personality when I was growing up. It's how you survive, so I think it was more of a natural progression for me, developing into comedy.
As an actor, these kinds of big-comedic-centerpiece characters is just one thing that I love to do.
If I'm gonna stay in this world of comedy, then it has to be a really special character to me in a really smart piece of material.
You can't please everybody. All you can do is please yourself.
You can only really hear the beat of your own drum if you give yourself the space to sit in it.
I've done a bunch of Broadway, so I'm a theater nerd when I come to New York.
As a kid, I watched a lot of TV.
Onstage was where I felt the most confident and in control and free, and as I've gotten older, it's gotten more and more daunting. And I think that's also part of my desire to keep confronting that and pushing through to find that childlike or youthful ignorance against fear and keep at it.
I was made fun of for being fat from fourth or fifth grade to eighth grade. That was pretty rough.
My deepest fear about doing TV, especially about doing a network comedy, was what if it felt too surface-y? What if it felt too jokey?
I've always sort of felt like I was from another time. The '70s is more my vibe. The clothes fit me better.
I was more of the kind of babysitter that liked holding the baby, sort of playing Mom, and then putting the baby to bed and watching TV while eating everything in their kitchen.
I started acting when I was seven, so I've read my share.
Working with David Gordon Green, and Jonah Hill, and Michael Cera, and Drew Barrymore, and all of those people - those are the best people in comedy to work with. Anna Faris. You know, that's my goal, to keep learning and to just keep working with the best people I can. And yeah, we do all hang out, and we all kind of know each other.
No one's up in arms about these PG-13 movies where it's literally about the end of the world.
Sitting around with Jim Carrey, coming up with bits, is, like, beyond a dream come true.
At 21, my career took a comedic turn when I was cast in a new Broadway play called 'Brooklyn Boy,' by Donald Margulies, which was equal parts funny and sad. I realized that the more seriously I expressed my character's feelings, the funnier the scene became.
The real heart of comedy is uncovering a truth about yourself or about the world that you didn't see.
I have the personality where, although my ego can be healthy, sometimes I also feel like people won't remember me, or they won't know who I am.
The worst thing you can have as an actor is too big an ego. It just kills creativity.
I love to cook for people. I equate food with love.
There are a lot of female characters out there that, when they fall on hard times, they sort of stew in their fears and negativities and vulnerabilities. And there's something that's really truthful about that - when I've gone through hard times or breakups, I've spent a lot of time on my couch overeating and crying with friends, that's true.
More and more, people probably associate me in this world of comedy and these confident, brassy, big ladies, which I love, but my insides and who I feel like internally and the kind of work that I hope to continue doing feels very different from that.
When you look at all of the male characters on television and in film, it's not like every one of them are the people doing the right thing that you can point to as your own moral compass. We need to have all kinds of characters represented.
It is mind-boggling to me that there are so few movies about female friendship, considering women make up half the movie-going population.
I was playing a lot of bigger, sort-of-comedic characters in slightly heightened realities, and it had been so fun and fulfilling for a long time. But it got to a point where I just felt like I didn't have that in me anymore.
In high school, everyone told me I had a great personality and sense of humor, but I wanted to be the girl who boys liked because she was pretty on top of being funny. I was boy crazy.
I don't have to fear that if I do more comedy I'm not going to get to do everything I want. I'll get to do my 'Yentl.'
Women care about their friends.
I think a reason why actors get reputations for being crazy and neurotic is because your life task is constantly in flux.
Comedy is funny when it comes from truth, and that's always the rule of them. It's about how far you can push that boundary.
The truth is, there are so few female roles in movies. That's really limiting. As an actor, you wanna be able to sink your teeth into something. You don't want to just be the best friend. You don't want to just be the girlfriend.
Humans are complex, and I think in entertainment in general, it's very easy to put people in boxes.
I didn't want to study theater or go to school in the city. I wanted the all-American 'Here's your quad' college experience.
My worst nightmare when I was in school was that I would get into trouble. I never got in trouble. I was a good student.
On stage, you have nothing to hide behind. It allows the work to live in a more organic place. It's almost like a meditation. You have to go on that stage and be as present as possible.
I was the girl who got out of my athletic requirement by managing the boys' sports teams. Which is pretty ingenious, because when I was a sophomore, I got a prom date out of it. That was really strong planning on my part.
The language can be different, but the emotional lives are the same no matter whether you're doing Shakespeare or Stoppard or something else... The emotional life is all the same.
I've been calling myself 'just an actor' since I was 6 years old. That's a long time.
