I had to really learn what it meant to be on a set and what the expectations were and what producers are. I had to learn who I'm talking to and what their functions are. I had a couple of gaffes: I would ask a person a question, and it wasn't their job. I had to Google their job description. That was the first big adjustment.

For most of my career, I've known what it's like to be in the audience and to enjoy what I'm seeing but still have the ambition to say, 'I can do that, I know I can do that. And I want to do that, and I can't wait for that to happen.'

I moved right to L.A., and I had a year of active unemployment. I had 50-something auditions for 50-something different projects, testing and doing callbacks, and could not get hired. And then, almost a year to the day of being out in L.A., I booked my first job, and then I started booking something every other month.

A few years after I graduated, I was doing a play in Boston and was asked to audition for Christophe Durang's play, 'Vonya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,' and I got the part. We were performing in Lincoln Center when, during our weekly meeting with producers, they that said they loved our show and wanted to take us to Broadway.

I was the first one in my family to go away to college. I came from a small town where there was no guidance in the high school at all. It was a mill town, and I never knew anyone who made their living from the arts. When you did go away to college, you went away to be something - an engineer, or a teacher, or a chemist.

Americans must place greater emphasis on the more subtle dimensions of national power, such as innovation, education, the balance of force and diplomacy, and the quality of political leadership.

My own life values were shaped in great part by my mother, who instigated women's clubs in my village. Women were able to organize and stand together. What inspired me most about their work was the power it gave them to assert their rights and the rights of their daughters, be it education or property inheritance.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.