A lot of the times, what girls go through when they're growing up gets minimized. 'Mean Girls' marked the first time I saw teenage female aggression articulated well and with importance.

When you become a professional, there is all this other stuff you have to do. That part is the job, capital J-O-B. They're very different things, but they're all part of the same career. Once you get onstage and you get to perform, that's your reward for doing your job.

For me, in my auditioning career and my professional life, since I am kind of a big person and since I have a big personality, I often find myself trying to squeeze myself into boxes that are really too small for me, and it ends up not working out.

The goal, when you're playing a character that's super beloved from a movie, is to honor what the actor before you has done and then really just expand, which is what you get to do in a musical because you have songs, choreography, and everything is happening in real time.

My parents were in high school when I was born. My mom was 16, my dad was 17. They were kids, at the very beginning of coming into their own and finding themselves.

I never bothered with cars. I was probably one of the few kids in school who didn't run around with hot-rod magazines. As I would be at home fiddling with my guitar, they would be fiddling with a car engine.

Football has always been my number one thing, but I have other things in my life, like fashion, which is something that has always been in my family.

I was allowed to do whatever made me happy. I can't think of a better or more worthwhile approach to parenting.