Marisa Tomei

I think the fantasy of being a movie star is more powerful than the reality. So, for me, even if it's not a great film or a great play I'm doing, to know that you went for it. You had an experience that made you grow artistically and personally. What's really satisfying is knowing that you did a good job.

With acting, it was really more of a general kind of experience of really just loving being in the theater.

I can't tell stories to save my life. I like to have fun, and I go out and have a lot of fun. But I'm not really an entertainer that way. I'm much more shy.

I've just been lucky. I'd like to have more choices, and I'd like to have a leading part.

I grew up on musicals, and I know they are quite the thing now, but I'm actually a little indignant, because I started taking singing lessons years ago - I put the time in!

Comedy is what I really want to do and propel.

I was exposed to the arts, but there was no one in my family who was an artist.

All of us have read the stories about young people in Hollywood and all the challenges they have to confront there, and I think that artistically, I really didn't understand the commercial side of the film business, so I went back to a purely artistic setting.

Politics itself is so unsexy, isn't it? But when the politics in creative works are really explored - not used as a vehicle - the results can be really interesting.