Stereotypes happen. I try not to embrace them or avoid them.

I think in many ways, I'm sort of a blank canvas, because in many ways, I'm just observing the world and the people around me and their characters and letting them kind of explode off me and to find out why they're doing what they're doing. But then every once in awhile, I get to take on a whole new character.

My job is to focus on bringing characters to life in an honest and personal way.

I'm not gonna be able to grow a beard. I've realized my limitations as a human.

The bullied straight kid goes home to a shoulder to cry on and support and can talk freely about his experience at school and why he's being bullied. I couldn't go home and open up to my parents.

The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn't have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.

I moved to Seattle when I was two or three years old. Had my early education there, and would spend summers on the farm in Maryland. Then I went to boarding school in New Hampshire, to St. Paul's School. From there, I moved to London.

Looking back, it puzzles me that my parents decided to stay in Shanghai when they must have known that war was imminent. But the cotton works were my father's responsibility, and duty then counted for something.