When I was ten, I wrote an essay on what I would be when I grew up and said I would be a professional soccer player and a comedian in off season.

When I was a kid, 'Land of the Lost' was my favorite show, just because it was - in the landscape of Saturday morning cartoons - it was so unique. It was a live-action show and kids were in it, these creatures, these Sleestaks and dinosaurs. Every week was a different adventure. I couldn't wait. I loved it so much.

By the time I was ready for college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I think I secretly wanted a show business career, but I was suppressing it.

One of my first memories of being a kid was, 'I want to have a real job when I grow up.' And to me that meant you wear a suit and a hat and carry a briefcase and go to your job.

I started to respect older actors when I was young and then contemporary actors later on. Then I learned respect for comedy. When I was first doing theatre, I thought of it as just a means to become Sarah Bernhardt or someone like that. But acting with young people has been a great learning experience.

Watching someone getting really angry can be very funny - if it doesn't affect you, you can laugh at it, and the sillier the thing he's angry about, the funnier it is.

I did auditions at a club called the Comedy Connection. They wanted nothing to do with me. But one night they were doing a night of all women comics, and they invited me to do that.

The beautiful thing about comedy in the U.K. is that it has a clever twist to it, and when you really break it down, the joke isn't filthy at all: it's clever.