I wanted to live in the suburbs and have a white picket fence and my own bedroom. And a staircase - I thought having a staircase meant that you were a normal family. I thought somehow if you could transplant us to the suburbs, we would become a normal family. But in retrospect, I'm so grateful I grew up in the Chelsea.
Gaby Hoffmann
I actually voted for Nader.
I've always looked the same, and every 10 years, I'm a little bit in fashion.
Suburbia, to me, was the most fantastical, unusual place. I thought it was Disneyland.
I was given an incredible gift growing up in the Chelsea, a space where it is completely fine to be yourself - you just had to figure out what that was. You didn't have to figure that out in the face of opposition at every turn.
I certainly don't have any boundaries myself, but I think I'm very aware of other people's.
I was like, Amazon Prime? Who has Amazon Prime? It turns out everybody.
I'm not on social media; I don't watch TV. I'm really out of it.
As an actress, vanity is your enemy. If you're thinking about how you look, you're not going to give a good performance. Once I realized, 'Hmm, I guess I'm not that vain,' it's like something I wanted to protect. I can't imagine anyone could give the full dynamic performance they're capable of and still be vain.
We lived in a classless society. We'd spend a summer at Gore Vidal's house in Italy, but we were on and off welfare.
I think being on a set where people aren't being treated as equals, and with just a common level of decency and respect, is really uncomfortable.
I've been very excited to have children for a long time. It definitely added an interesting twist to the night we screened 'Lyle' at Outfest, and I got up to do the Q&A, and I had this huge belly no one was expecting. It creeped everybody out in the best way.
I don't know if I'd say I feel green, but I'm getting to know myself as an actor now in a way that I never did as a kid.
I don't revisit anything unless there's a really good occasion, like BAM screened 'This Is My Life', with Lena Dunham and Nora Ephron before she died. It also screened 'Uncle Buck', so I took my niece. I don't have a TV, so I don't happen upon old movies like you would if you had cable.
I don't think it should be allowed for people to start working at a young age and not take the time to just be living as themselves in the real world, especially now in this new age of new media and the obsession with celebrity. I think it's a real crime.
I'm somebody who's super into psychology and analysis and the human psyche and the human experience.
When people are struggling, that's a painful place to be in, to not know who you are and where you belong and what you desire.
I went to school to study literature and writing, even though I didn't end up really doing that in the end. I thought I would be a teacher, but I didn't really think about it in any practical way.
You can do your job and be yourself and be comfortable all at the same time!
I never set out to be an actor. Again, my mother presented this job by job to me at the time, and if it sounded fun, I would say yes and if it didn't, I would say no. I always knew, since I was 7 or 8 years old, that it was a means to an end and that I wanted to go to college.
I curate my T.V.-watching quite carefully.
I thought I was a sexy symbol!
I basically took six or seven years off, but then I had another five or four of me not working at all because I was in school. It was really 13 years of me not working at all... I really couldn't even think about it.
If somebody smiles at me on the street, I'm like, 'Hi, have a nice day!'
I was watching 'Pulp Fiction' when we were making 'Now and Then'. I didn't care about 'Now and Then,' you know?
The amount of attention and sensitivity and education that we're getting in terms of specifically the transgender community is great, and certainly that's new to me. But it's not incredibly unfamiliar. I grew up in downtown New York in the '80s.
It's true that most people in the trans community don't have the incredible wealth and privilege that Caitlyn does. I don't think that, in any way, diminishes her struggle in her own transitioning.
I have a teacher friend who gets nervous when there's $200 in her account. But at least she knows that in a week, she'll get another paycheck. I have no idea.
I am paid to dive deeper into my own humanity and do that with other people in collaboration... so that, in and of itself, I just feel like is the greatest privilege in the world.
Going into my 20s, I was uncertain, trying to figure out what my relationship to acting is.
I met Jill Soloway at Sundance a couple years ago. I was there for 'Crystal Fairy', and she was there for 'Afternoon Delight'. She reached out and wanted to get together.
I had a world of people raising me; it was like a little village.
I was born naked. I'm a natural. I'm a natural nude. So I've been on camera naked a lot.
I'm not one of those New Yorkers who so much identifies themselves with the city that they can't imagine living anywhere else. I plan to live a lot of other places, but it is defiantly is a big part of who I am. I have a complicated relationship with it. It has changed so much, but I love it, and it's my home. I'm really glad I grew up there.
It was like I lived in a little suburban neighborhood in the middle of New York City because I could run around barefoot or, you know, completely independently from a very young age in the safety of this building where I knew everybody and where I had friends on every floor, and I knew the bellmen in the lobby.
I just wrapped a new show for Amazon called 'Transparent.'
I grew up with artists and drag queens. These were just my neighbors and friends and the people who are raising me.
Anything that needs to be accessed is within me. Even if it's in a circumstance that seems outrageous, I can still just go back to the basic human experience and it's all there.
I don't watch a lot of T.V. I only watch things via Netflix, so I only watch the things that I'm choosing to watch.
I think anyone who behaves boorishly but without a good sense of humor is not as fun to watch.
Here in America, just as we see such incredible progress happening in one state, we see another state passing absolutely disgusting and oppressive laws against the rights of all sorts of people - transgender people, gay people, women.
My mom grew up in a strict Catholic family and moved to New York and became part of the Warhol factory.
Nudity has never been a big deal to me. I sort of grew up with a lot of it in my family.
I know that in my own personal life, the people who I have dated who are funny can get away with a lot more than the people who aren't.
If you needed to borrow a cup of sugar, you knocked on your neighbour's door.
My mom was a single mother, raising my sister and me. My mom has an incredible talent for living in the world without traditional structure, and her friend, who was in advertising, put me in a commercial when I was five. It was just to make money.
I always knew when I graduated from high school, I'd go to college. I never thought about what I was walking away from... I just wanted to study literature and writing.
People are obsessed with actresses being hairless, fatless Barbie dolls.
I'd started acting as a child. But I wanted to see if it was something my true personality was interested in. I stepped away from offers when I took five years off to go to college. I've only really just decided to whole-heartedly embrace acting.
The early part of my career was the 1990s, and I was living in New York working as an actor. It was the world I was in. A lot of companies had a great deal of money.
