In the real world, I kind of, like, thrived a little bit. The things that were awkward about me at school, like being hyper passionate... I realized, 'Oh I'm my own person, and I have my own idiosyncrasies and nuances that I don't mind.'
I hate alarms. If they go off I get really tetchy. I hate them. They just get me going, I'm hyper at the best of times, but they drive me mad.
What strikes me when I leave Washington is the extent to which there's a huge disconnect between Washington and the rest of the country. The rest of the country is not hyper partisan.
As far as hypnosis is concerned, I had a very serious problem when I was in my twenties. I encountered a man who later became the president of the American Society of Medical Hypnosis. He couldn't hypnotize me.
The people who are most susceptible to hypnosis - the rugger bugger types - were also the ones who intimidated me most at school, so on an unconscious level I suppose I'm turning the tables on them.
I feel angry that I can't be hypnotized. I'm not putting it down, and I'm not saying that it doesn't exist. I have talked to a great many people who are very good at it, but so far nobody has ever been able to hypnotize me.
Reality has always attracted me like a magnet; it tortured and hypnotized me. I wanted to capture it on paper.
I was helping my mom grind meat at our butcher shop, and it just hypnotized me. I don't remember sticking my hand in, but it sheared off the three middle fingers and left me with a pinkie and a thumb.
Playing Willie Loomis was really fun for me because it was something nice and different to embody. It was neat playing this drunken servant who was hypnotized by Johnny Depp.
I first fell in love with music when I was a little boy. When I first heard music, I felt the beauty in it. Then, being able to tap along on a table top and box was great, but my favorite thing to do was to watch records spin. I would almost get hypnotized by it. These things are what drew me in initially.
I'd be the biggest hypocrite if I said I really worked very hard for my career, because it was given to me on a silver platter. I can't take any credit.
Here's my questions to anybody when they talk about comedy. When you are with your friends, who don't judge you, what do you say? And if that's appropriate to say with your friends, why is it not appropriate anywhere else. Like, I hate those people who judge me and are hypocrites.
It would be hypocritical of me to use being female in some ways, and diss being female in other ways. It's part of the programme.
It's hypocritical to say when things are going well, 'Interview me. Ask me how great I am. Ask me about family and personal life.' At some point later, when someone wants information and you want to draw the line, how do you do that?
I often find it maddening to live in America, in a way that is both amusing and horrifying to me. America clings to versions of itself that are absolutely hypocritical. I can't shake my outrage at it, so I write about it.
Sometimes I like to list the strongest arguments I can find to support a point of view I think is wrong. When I have them before me, I am up against a real opponent rather than a hypothetical one that is an easy target for me to hit.
Sometimes I make very selfish choices; like I did 'Once Upon A Time' for my inner 8-year-old and my hypothetical future child. I've done some movies because I would regret them if I didn't, but other projects I've done because they've scared me or if I felt I needed to do a big romantic comedy to help me professionally.
Everything is ironic to me. There are moments I find hysterical, but I'm probably the only one who would find that, except for a few people.
My nieces and my nephews think the only thing that I do is 'Ice Age.' That's fine with me because pretty soon they'll grow up enough to realize that I suck or that my time has passed, whichever it might be.
I go back to family: 'Ice Age' was about disparate characters rejected by their own kind. They come together to save the child. 'Despicable Me' is about redefining what a family could be. It has a visual distinction and an experimental quality.
