I wake up and play a different person every day. Playing all these different characters and trying to figure out who your true authentic self is at the core of that as you're playing all these different roles, and man, that self-awareness starts to come into effect. And you start to see who you really are.
It's easy to play a bad girl: You just do everything you've been told not to do, and you don't have to deal with the consequences, because it's only acting.
I literally remember when I made my audition tape for 'Buffy'. I went to the Arsenal Mall. I got my outfit at Contempo Casuals in the Arsenal Mall and put some safety pins in my jeans. I remember telling whoever the clerk was that I was making a tape for 'Buffy', and they were so excited.
We didn't have a TV in the living room and all my friends thought we were kind of weird. When they'd come over, my mom wanted to talk to them about current events.
The letters from jail are always disconcerting.
After I graduated high school and came out to do 'Buffy,' I was enrolled at my mom's university, and I was going to go get a real job. I never thought of acting and never really wanted to be an actor.
My mom grew up in Idaho, went to Brigham Young University: they're very Molly Mormon. And my father is, like, first generation Albanian, and his parents lived in Southey and grew up in downtown Boston. My parents are complete opposites.
There are a lot of actresses out there who are the girl next door. I relate more to characters who have an edge.
I have nieces and nephews that I love hanging out with, and they think I'm the biggest goof on the planet.
For the longest time, I thought I was a boy. I really did. I wore boys' clothes, played tag football.
I don't let guys do hickeys. That's like a dog marking his territory or something.
My mother would take groups of students to different countries and always brought us along, so by the time I was 10, I had been to Russia, China, Nicaragua and several other countries.
My parents divorced when I was born, and my mother is a political science professor, like a feminist Mormon, which is sort of an oxymoron.
My mom is this liberal, feminist, Mormon powerhouse. I just love her to death.
I remember having a Mike Tyson T-shirt back in the day that I used to sleep in. And there some things that Tyson did along the way that I wasn't too psyched to associate myself with. But back in the day, just as a fighter, what a dream that was to watch and root for him.
I'm self-confident and not afraid to speak my mind.
I was raised in Boston by three older brothers and a very strong and empowering single mom.
When I worked with Jamie Lee Curtis in 'True Lies', she told me, You need a plan B, because when you have six months to a year off, you can go nuts. You need to have another focus.
I really admire the way the fans have joined me in social justice endeavours and the charitable work that I've been involved in. We've raised over $100,000 on Twitter for our non-profit in Uganda.
I think people hear and feel the genuine nature of my passion for the causes. Specifically, with the non-profit in Uganda, my mother is the president, and she was an African politics professor for almost 50 years, so I think people know that I align myself with people who know what they're talking about.
