Performing has always been something I wanted to do. My dad had a video camera and I loved being in front of it.

I am big in Japan... heightwise! But, yeah, I started modeling there in my teens and into my 20s. I did Calvin Klein, Uniqlo, and lots of magazine covers. It's such a beautiful country, and they have beer vending machines right on the street. Love that!

My dream role would be someone anything that Meryl Streep can do. 'Julia and Julia' - I thought that was beautiful. She just had the essence of her. To truly become someone, invoking emotions like happiness and sadness and everything in between, that's what I want to be able to do.

This guy in L.A. asks for my autograph every time I see him. Then I find out he's eBaying 'em for $50. I'm flattered, but no one's going to pay $50 for anyone's autograph, let alone mine.

Some of us are interested in directors, but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors, so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination.

There's no such thing as a writer's block. If you're having trouble writing, well, pick up the pen and write. No matter what, keep that hand moving. Writing is really a physical activity.

I wanted to write something visual that I could read to the children. This was when I created the idea of Redwall Abbey in my imagination. As I wrote, the idea grew, and the manuscript along with it.

Anyone who's taken a lot of creative-writing classes, or taught creative writing, has learned to dread a certain kind of manuscript. It's long, for one thing. It has irritatingly small type; it's grammatically meticulous when it comes to everything but punctuation, for which it has developed its own system of Tolkienic elaboration.