My parents gave me an incredible foundation and a strong faith in who I am. They loved me in the face of so many unknowns.
I thought, 'Oh, I'll be an independent producer. Oh, I'll be a manager.' I was going through all those things in my head, and one night, late at night, I was having what I would now describe as probably a panic attack because there were so many unknowns. An almost literal voice came into my head telling me, 'You need to write.'
When I got diagnosed, the more research I did about it - MS overall, as a subject, as a disease - there's a lot of misconceptions and there's a lot of unknowns about it, and there wasn't anyone out that was close to my age or close to anything like me out there.
I was interested in big unknowns, and the brain is one of the biggest, so building tools that allow us to regard the brain as a big electrical circuit appealed to me.
For me, every film is a learning process. After each, I take time to unlearn.
People think that theatre helps, but in my case, it slowed me down. I had to unlearn everything when I went on to a film set.
Writing has always been an incredible outlet for me to feel like I have a voice, even when sometimes I was the only one reading my work. It has been a way for me to unlock my imagination. That's when the world becomes yours, after all.
I went to school and studied music for a year at USC, which unlocked a bunch of doors for me in terms of my relationship to music.
When I heard 'Dookie' by Green Day for the first time, it unlocked something in me, like, it's totally okay that I'm a little bit weird because these guys are a little bit weird. It made me want to pick up an instrument and do that.
Pop music can get inside us and enter our memory bubbles. It provides those true Proustian moments, unlocking sensations, unlocking our imaginations. Music inspired me as a filmmaker.
Acting is fascinating to me. I love unlocking the mysteries with characters and finding out what would be the most intriguing aspect of that character to exist in. Figuring out a person and getting to be a different person every day, hey - that's pretty lucky. I don't have to wake up and be Amanda if I don't feel like it. You know, that's fun.
My background is really being a writer's actor - that seems to be the way I work best, bringing out the best of writing. There's a whole range of acting skills, and some people can be astonishing with very poor material. That's not me; my skill is essentially unlocking the writing.
In some sense, prose fiction is just a way of unlocking a space. If I can unlock the space, it comes out and it's vivid, I find that I care about it, and it's part of me.
I think what helps me is that delegations of all sizes - the small, the medium, the large, the largest - they all have seen me in action. They all have seen me unlocking blockages, unlocking impasses for several years now, and they all know that... I can bring a constructive mood to the table.
The belief when your mother gives you away is that there's something deeply wrong. Mothers don't give babies away. There's something wrong with me, something unlovable, something seriously flawed in me. It's a fundamental thing; it's precognitive. You feel it rather than think it. How could you not?
I suppose I'd always been attracted to commitment-phobes because some part of me felt unlovable. It was a lot easier to fall for a guy who I knew, on some level, wouldn't fall in love with me. There was nothing to risk. The real risk would be to finally be vulnerable to love.
If I don't get at least one e-mail every ten minutes, I feel unloved. Even junk mail makes me feel seen. Sad, I know. Sigh.
I'm an unlucky charm... don't go anywhere with me.
My characters are always unlucky in love. It's annoying, but perhaps there is something in me that is suited to characters that have a darkness. Maybe it's why I play such damaged people when I'm not particularly damaged myself, I would say.
I feel lucky that I found my talent, not unlucky that I was born with a disability. When I'm on a horse, I'm more worried about what the riding hat is doing to my hair than what my bent legs and arms are doing. What riding has given me is respect.
