The storytelling in a movie is in the cut; it's in the edit. It's not an actor's job, really. Your job is such a tiny little thing, and I love the feeling of juggling or tightrope walking.
Kerry Bishe
I want to make art that is helpful, that's useful to people, that starts fruitful conversations. That makes you think about a question that you hadn't considered before.
I went to a Cal Tech party after the 'Facebook' movie came out, and there were kids in dark rooms coding because it was cool again. That movie made it cool to sit in a room at a party and write code.
I am sick to my stomach, just, all the time. The tools in my toolbox to address that are choosing jobs where I can be a full, complete person, where I have some agency and autonomy.
I watch a lot of classic movies - my TV guilty pleasures are 'The Wonder Years' or the original 'MASH' show.
Playing the same role over and over makes me feel claustrophobic sometimes and smaller than I am.
One of the ways that I think about my being an artist and an actor is... it's an experiment.
The kinds of people that we see on television making science are old white guys with crazy hair, and those aren't the only people making science.
It's a whole series of accidents that makes a show into a hit. A show can be fantastic and still not be a hit. You just have to hit the Zeitgeist at the right moment, and there are so many factors that you're not in control of.
I have a whole life in New York and a life in L.A. and to live one-third of the year in a place that isn't one of those is kind of a bummer.
I think that some people like to be someone other than themselves when acting, while others are most themselves. I fall into the second camp. For me, acting is a great exercise in getting to the truth about myself.
I did a lot of theater, so especially as an on-camera camera actor, there are so many things that aren't in your toolbox. They're somebody else's job. You think about editors and rhythm. Volume isn't even in your control.
My brother has a Ph.D. in biochemistry, which I find so totally impressive.
I don't wanna be in a show that's salacious just for the sake of getting viewers.
I'd love to play St. Joan or Hamlet, and hopefully I will.
There are a great number of people from New Jersey who go on to have pretty successful careers.
Keeping secrets is hard.
Showing women being scientists on television can have a great impact on who actually goes into science as a profession.
I was a mime. I'm not kidding. I went to Northwestern University and they have a mime company, so we did a lot of training and then a lot of mime shows around Chicago.
I'm kind of a Luddite myself. I've got a bunch of typewriters at home. I'm a big fan of old technology.
To me, one of the things I love about being an actor is that it's never done; it's never perfect, and so it's the process. It's like practicing being okay with things not being perfect and things being outside of your control.
I think it's really rare to see women on television who are brilliant, selfish, vain, fallible - and I feel like I have all those capacities in myself, so it's good to see people in the media representing all of those things.
I could never understand how to build a computer, but the best I could hope for is to understand the people that do.
I love smart and curious people. I value intelligence in my friends and relationships.
When I'm working, it's just about doing the best I can with whatever dialogue is in front of me today. You can't worry about the other thing.
Acting, for me, is not an end in itself. It's more a means to asking the questions I'm obsessed with about life.
For a long time, I really blithely walked around in the world imagining that gender didn't matter any more and behaving like I was on equal footing with other people. And I think, for a long time, it was easy to live in the world that way.
You do a straight play for three months, four months, maybe. It's so brief. And then you're on to the next thing. I loved that. I love that rhythm and that pace.
Doing a one-person play feels like you've just discovered you had a superpower.
I'm obviously interested in playing characters who have autonomy, who drive the story.
I'm not interested in political theater.
I think it's a lot harder to forgive yourself for your own mistakes.
I'm a real amateur enthusiast for science.
If you're on a TV show, you never know what's going to happen week to week with your character.
It's more important to represent women as complete, whole, complicated humans as opposed to saintly, perfect women. The point isn't that they have to be good people. It's that they have to be people.
The Romanoffs are like the other side of 'The Great Gatsby.' 'Gatsby' is about the people who don't have the history but who want it. And 'The Romanoffs' is about the people who have it and don't know what to do with it.
