Jessica Pare

I drive past the Mad Men billboard every day and I can't believe I'm on that show.

I'm a huge Marlene Dietrich fan. She's got this raunchy kind of strength. It would be hard to find a man who could come up with something hard for her to handle. She's seen it all and done it all.

I didn't want to have braces when I was a kid and I'm pretty sure my dad didn't want to pay for them.

And, of course, all of my friends and family are so excited because they feel like Montreal is being represented on Mad Men.

An actor will use every piece of information at their disposal, or a good actor will.

I went through a whole phase when I was younger of being obsessed with Tolstoy and Kafka and Camus, all those really, beautiful, dark depressing books.

I would like to explore comedy more. It's not something that I've done a lot of. Obviously, I'm very at home in drama. I like everything.

I'm thinking of putting together an all-star band. I definitely have a bit of a rock fantasy.

My parents made me finish high school before I started acting, and I did, like, two weeks of fine arts college before I was like, 'This sucks. I'm going!' I got a few small jobs, and then I booked a big-for-Canada feature.

I have an enormous family because I'm from Montreal and my family's Catholic, so my dad has eight siblings and they all have kids and we all grew up in the same property on weekends and summers.

I think I've always been ambitious. It just looks different on me. You know, I have friends who are actresses who go to every party they possibly can to be photographed and really try to make every connection they can, and I admire that and sometimes I wish I had a little bit more of that. Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough ambition.

My natural gravitation is toward the gray and the black and the white and the burgundy. Sort of muted, cool colors.