My work on the Judiciary Committee has made me more aware of the InfoWars content than when I appeared previously in a very standard and respectful interview.
Whenever I write about mental health and integrative therapies, I am accused of being prejudiced against pharmaceuticals. So let me be clear - integrative medicine is the judicious application of both conventional and evidence-based natural therapies.
However judicious academics may be - not like me - they are all taught to see through crap.
I've been acting for 15 years now, and the more you do, the more confidence you get about 'this is my career, and this is what I'm going to be doing.' Since I've started coming to the States, I've had a really great response. It's given me a lot of confidence to be more judicious about my own choices.
As a kid, during the school year, my head was often buried in a textbook or Judy Blume book; the words and pictures were the perfect, barrier-free environment for me.
I always have trouble with titles for my books. I usually have no title until the editor has to present the book and calls me frantically, 'Judy, we need a title.'
My mother was harsh and constantly told me I had jug ears and heaven knows what else. But she was devoted and a hard worker.
I remember on 'Jug Face' working with Chad Crawford Kinkle, who is as sweet as they come. He told me someone had given him advice that if you're making a drama, you basically need to put your main protagonist through living hell in every scene, and then you'll have a successful film. He laughed it off until watching me every day!
Lots of people juggle a lot of things in their personal and private lives, and I'm not unusual in that. Plenty of women have multitasked before me, and I want to acknowledge that.
I took it as my personal responsibility to be able to juggle. I didn't want anybody to help me and I didn't expect my office to make it easy for me.
Motherhood has relaxed me in many ways. You learn to deal with crisis. I've become a juggler, I suppose. It's all a big circus, and nobody who knows me believes I can manage, but sometimes I do.
For me, juggling mommyhood and work is a challenge, but each day I learn little tricks to make it all come together.
Early in the morning, it's super tough for me to eat right away, but I still need energy for practice. I try to start out with a protein smoothie, a green juice, or some sort of fruit.
I was just so sick. I thought that orange juice was going to make me fat.
My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you could find miracles and truth and you might find something that would make you laugh so hard that you get shushed, in the friendliest way.
I just wanted to go to New York and be on Broadway, but then I was accepted by Juilliard, where they trained me in classical voice. It was great in the end, but at the time, I thought, 'What am I doing here? This is not my path.' But it was absolutely my path and where I was meant to be.
Juilliard gave me the ability to go and do classical, contemporary, comedy, drama, everything.
I remember when I got into Juilliard - which was just crazy to me, that I would be studying at a school like that - the choice to cut all my hair off was really symbolic for me.
Not even my excellent training at Juilliard prepared me for my first movie role, where I played a transsexual who falls in love with a military guy in 'Soldier's Girl.'
Sometimes when you're doing fantasy, that's the most important thing, is to be a blank space, because the last thing you want to do ever as an actor is judge yourself or the character or the movie that you're in. You want to just play the moment as best you can. Juilliard helped me do that.
