All I listened to until age 18 growing up was musical theater. I liked the escapism of it.

I was kind of an unhappy kid. I always felt like a cynical New Yorker trapped in a little kid's body. I started to get some pretty bad anxiety disorders around puberty, which totally did not work with growing up a mile away from the beach. I started cutting my own hair.

The No. 1 thing I am earnestly attracted to is intelligence.

It's double talk and double standards. It's like, be honest, but don't be too honest. Look fresh-faced and young, but don't tell us how you got there. God forbid you have plastic surgery, even though we're telling you, 'Oh, you look old.' Be a career woman, but also, why aren't you having kids? Are you some kind of cold shrew?

I think the Hammer films really made death quite sexy.

One of our main objectives is to restore meritocracy within research and academia, where cronyism is also widespread. We also want to give money back to public research that is dying.

I am calm but on the outside, mostly. When I'm on a film set, the stress is so humongous that I'm dying inside - I'm extremely stressed, but I do try, and... well, I don't try. I think it's my natural reaction to not externalize things.

The aims of life are the best defense against death.