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.

I was fortunate. And I hate using the word lucky, but I was very, very lucky. Because, all of those things were around me man. The violence, the drugs, the abuse of women. All these things were present in my life. And I take a step back and I try to reflect on my journey and what helped me out.

What I've found - and the older I get, the more I understand this and stand behind it - is, my whole life has been an exploration of telling the truth. It's scary to be truthful, and it's scary to reveal yourself, and I'm very attracted to doing things that scare me.

The purpose of work is not to make money. The purpose of work is to make the workers, whether working stiffs or top executives, feel good about life.

In real life I've learned to love not wearing any makeup whatsoever, and I'm super low-maintenance when it comes to my hair.