I don't consider myself bossy, but I do know what I want. You know, I have a gut feeling about a piece of material, but I've never envisioned myself as the director on top of the hill with a megaphone in my hand, screaming at 1,000 extras.
I surprise myself that I'm not dead in the gutter somewhere, surprised that I haven't given up.
I'm not a big Hollywood guy. I don't know how the machine works. I leave that to people better than myself.
I think I finally have really taken ownership of myself and me as a gymnast.
I told myself after 2008 that I was done for good. But they say you can't keep a gymnast away from her sport.
The funny thing is that I've known since I was 7 years old that I was never going to have kids. I always imagined myself as this worldly, traveling gypsy lady.
I had always loved music. I grew up listening to classic country, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard. My dad loved Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley. So I kept going to class and started getting totally into playing guitar and teaching myself these songs.
There's not a day that goes by that I don't bless myself with holy water and then get in my car and rub the medal of the Virgin Mary that she gave me and say a Hail Mary for my mother. And then I kiss her Mass card that's right there on the dashboard.
To this day, my haircut is the number two clippers, which I apply to myself every month.
I used to be pretty hard on myself, like, if I didn't like a haircut I did on someone, I would think about it a lot and second-guess myself. But after therapy and a lot of work, I know how to dust myself off a lot faster, and those things don't knock me down as much as they used to.
Neymar has been an idol of mine since childhood. I've always tried to mirror myself in the way he plays, and I've also tried imitating some of his haircuts.
I don't make an effort to be sloppy. I just don't consider a perfect hairdo and a perfect face to be beautiful. If I had my way I'd dress myself and do my own makeup for magazine shoots.
I cut my hair myself and colour it. I know everybody in the hairdressing business despairs of me, but it's so much easier to do it yourself.
I don't have to psych myself up, or do something special mentally - I look through the scope, get my target in the cross hairs, and kill my enemy, before he kills one of my people.
To outsiders it probably seems like splitting hairs, but to me, Bright Eyes is a simply the collaboration between myself and Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. What you hear is definitely the sum of all our ideas and represents all three of us. But I still write the songs myself.
When I was doing 'Smile,' I was looking back at pictures of myself and going, 'Thank goodness I couldn't do the sprayed-bangs thing! Everybody's so embarrassed by that hairstyle now, but I was never cool enough to pull it off!'
I use my hair as a tool for portraying characters. When I'm auditioning for a role, when I'm putting myself on tape for something, I always consider what the hairstyle is going to be because it changes the way people perceive me.
I look back at the looks I've had over the years. I'm proud of myself that I had the courage to experiment with crazy hairstyles and some fashion things. Would I do it again? No. But that's part of the learning process and getting from point A to point B.
Do I have a small movie in me? Yeah, probably, when I'm 60. But I'm not Hal Ashby, I'm not Roman Polanski. I'm true to myself. Whether you like it or not.
If I need to cheer myself up, I will put on some fabulous '40s musical on video. But I'm very lucky; I seldom get depressed. Without question, I'm a 'glass half full' person. In fact, it's three-quarters full!
