I get horrified when I have to do table reads with the whole cast, because there's a lot of stuttering coming from me, so I have to do a lot of prep.

I don't really have an issue with showing certain parts of my body. I'd rather not, but it's not a big deal. Growing up in Sweden, it's natural over there.

I think it's critical in any character you play that it really is about reacting instead of acting. You can always tell when a person is acting.

I wouldn't have made it past the first round of American Idol auditions. It was months before our first song was recorded. The guys were like, 'Just seeng!' And I was like, 'I don't know how to seeng! Can't I just play the triangle?'

I can't not find humor in elements of most parts of life, but at the same time nothing ever seems perpetually funny to me.

Everybody in comedy has something like that happen to them: They bomb, or no one shows up. You're like, 'Hey, I'm funny, trust me!' And the world collectively goes, 'Yeah, you and everybody else.'

Dame Edna is that rarest sighting in our time of the absolute comic, an inspired personification of caprice whose comedy answered the primal call to take the audience for a tumble.

I did sketch comedy with a troupe at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.