Alex Borstein
I love the freedom of voice-over and the ability to play multiple characters I could never play in real life: a hot young woman, a little boy.Collection: Freedom
If you believe in romance, and if you believe in marriage, you also have to believe in divorce. It's like, with 'Getting On,' a lot of people say, 'I don't want to watch that. It's so dark.' But you can't just want to go to weddings and children's birthday parties. You've got to witness it all.Collection: Marriage
My uncle is a hemophiliac, and my brother is one as well. I am a carrier, and it's a disease that my kids also deal with. It's something that has affected my family and I for so long, and I think it's actually what drove me to comedy as a means to cope during tough times.
As an actor, you create your own ideas.
I have no point in my system or morals where I say, 'This is too far.'
I've always felt like an outsider as a woman. I've never really felt wholly comfortable in a women's world or woman's things. I've never been conventionally pretty or thin or girly-girl. Never felt dateable. All I've seen on TV has never felt like mine.
Stand-up's hard. It's one of the hardest things in the world, and it's really lonely.
Every comic is really a frustrated rock star.
I got my degree in rhetoric.
Television and film acting is really fun because you are working with other people and you are not completely responsible for the outcome of the project.
Usually, impersonations come out of something you dig, because you're listening to it over and over. And you kind of start developing... You're really trying to emulate them, then you realize, 'I sound ridiculous doing this. Oh, hey, maybe this is a funny impersonation.'
I'm still auditioning and doing other movie parts, but I really like the developing and the writing. You have more control over your destiny.
I think I was born because my parents had two boys and wanted to give it one more go and try for a girl... they got me instead.
My dad was raised Orthodox in Atlanta. He speaks Hebrew. He speaks Yiddish. He married a Jewish woman who is not Orthodox, so I was brought up by two different kinds of Jews.
People who have picture-perfect upbringings and lives tend not to be funny. I don't think they write from a position of pain.
Being an outsider helps breed comedy.
I grew up with a grandmother from another country and having a different language in my house. That gave me an ear for accents.
Losing my grandmother was one of the hardest things I ever had to go through.
'Getting On' is just the coolest experience ever, and working with people like Laurie Metcalf, that's the joy. That's what I love about it.
I still get very uncomfortable and flushed on the street if somebody recognizes me or stops me. I don't know what to say. It's uncomfortable and strange.
I don't want pictures of my kids anywhere. I don't tweet pictures of my kids. I don't put them on any social media. I definitely do like to keep some privacy that way. And mostly, it's fear-based; people are crazy.
Amy Sherman-Palladino is very funny. She's got just natural timing and comedic instinct. And she writes in a comedic rhythm.
I was kind of the comic relief in my household. We had a chronic illness in the family. And so, a lot of emergency room visits, and my role was to be silly and add levity, and we're Jewish. So every Passover is a performance. You kind of learn to role play and do voices at the Passover Seder.
I've spent most of my life writing and developing everything that I've wanted to be in - which is why I started writing in the first place.
The hardest thing in the world to depict dramatically is stand-up.
I'm terrible at learning lines. I'm good at learning lines when I don't have to be word-perfect.
When I was doing stand-up, there were a lot of things I talked about that seemed very silly but were therapeutic.
I never became a road comic.
I always loved performing, but my parents were very practical, middle-class Jewish people.
My rhetoric degree ended up being very helpful in advertising. I got an internship and then figured I will be a copywriter; that will be my path.
Animation is very similar to sketch comedy: you have a short amount of time to do something big and ridiculous and funny.
'Getting On' - that show, it broke my heart. It really was like the greatest love of my life. I'm forever changed by it.
My biggest fear is the ocean. It's a great big, powerful sea toilet.Collection: Powerful
Never try to fit a target audience. Write what is true to the characters in their settings and the audience will find you.Collection: Writing
I think all shows change as they age as do the people who make the shows. As do the people who watch the shows. All targets are moving.Collection: Moving
I am a fan of whatever makes me laugh my ass off. If it happens to be a Jew joke, then it's a Jew joke.Collection: Laughing
Guys can look like pigs. The girl always has to be a looker. Look at most TV shows: According To Jim - pig and a looker. Still Standing - pig and a looker. Ralph Kramden [on The Honeymooners] - pig and a looker. Family Guy - pig and a looker. It's a theme.Collection: Girl
The writing is amazing because having a hand in creating what you're going to be performing... there's nothing like it. It's always going to be better suited for you. You're always going to know the lines faster, because you wrote it. The writing is so very hard. It's the hardest part of the whole process. In some ways the acting is a lot easier and a lot more fun.Collection: Fun
I think this [Feels like Christmas] is one of the greatest, most unsung albums ever. It's Cyndi Lauper, and it's called Hat Full Of Stars. She's so underrated.Collection: Stars
If for no other reason than it's just fun to watch people age, and it's fun to watch what happened to '80s hairdos and outfits, and what they look like now.Collection: Fun
I don't do sketch anymore and sometimes I miss it. But I think what I really miss is that time in my life, it was kind of like college. No kids, no real responsibilities, just comedy, food and late nights.Collection: Real
I have no point in my system or morals where I say, 'This is too far'.Collection: Moral
I have always been a HUGE Star Wars fan since I was like 5 years old. Most of us in the writers room at Family Guy were big nerds growing up and could recite almost any scene from Star Wars.Collection: Stars