Gaby Hoffmann
I really, really loved making 'This Is My Life' and 'Now and Then.'
I've never been on a television show as a regular before.
I think sexuality is fluid, and we have such a strange relationship to it in this country. It's been so fixed and so controlled for so long.
I often use the word 'magical' to talk about what it feels like on set.
Every scene is on the table to collaborate on, to pick apart, to try a million different ways. Usually, what ends up occurring in the end is something that no single person knew would happen or had planned for.
I'm interested in people. I'm curious about people, and of course we're curious about people whose work we respond to. So I'm not saying that I don't understand fascination with other people. But as it's dealt with in this American, modern-day culture, I find it not just boring but actually sort of destructive, really.
I was anxious before I decided to go back to acting about what I wanted to do with my life. Once I realized I was sort of interested in acting, I've been pretty lucky and had all these great parts. And I feel pretty much like, 'What will happen will happen.'
If somebody smiles at me on the street, I'm like, 'Hi, have a nice day!'
People would say, 'Can I hug you?' And I would say, 'Yes, you can hug me! We're fellow New Yorkers!'
There's something extremely bizarre about the way people consume media now.
If you don't have a healthy relationship with yourself, how can you with anyone else? Even if it's not healthy, I imagine it's a lot of fun. And healthy or not, I still think there can be a lot of love.
My senior thesis was a documentary. By the time I graduated from college, I thought I was going to make films, and my interest in acting was there but kind of confused.
Here in America, just as we see such incredible progress happening in one state, we see another state passing absolutely disgusting and oppressive laws against the rights of all sorts of people - transgender people, gay people, women.
I loved being on the set of 'Field of Dreams' because I hung out with the baseball players all day, played cards, flirted with Ray Liotta, and had a ball.
Every once in a while, I would say, 'I don't want to do this anymore,' and I would go back to third grade, and after six months, I'd say, 'OK, I'm bored. Let's go make a movie.'
Her mother, Laurie Simmons, is a contemporary artist, and my stepmother, Cindy Sherman, is a photographer, so they've known each other forever. Lena and I were often at the same dinner parties when we were kids.
We lived in a classless society. We'd spend a summer at Gore Vidal's house in Italy, but we were on and off welfare.
I was never as famous as all these kids. There was no social media. We weren't celebrity-obsessed as a culture. I feel like these kids are under a crazy microscope; they're basically brands. And they eventually implode and act out. They need a break, and they're not getting one.
Our parents all experimented with raising us in a fairly loose, unorthodox way. A huge emphasis was placed on creativity, and our artistic efforts were never dismissed as childish. There was a sense that we - kids and grown-ups - all had the potential to make something of value. Our drawings were not simply destined for the refrigerator.
I just wanted to rollerblade at Union Square.
It was like I lived in a little suburban neighborhood in the middle of New York City because I could run around barefoot or, you know, completely independently from a very young age in the safety of this building where I knew everybody and where I had friends on every floor, and I knew the bellmen in the lobby.
My mom could be pretty strict.
I think mental illness is a slippery slope to talk about these days because people are overly diagnosed, overly prescribed, overly everything.
There's a lot of improv in 'Girls'.
I'm not on social media; I don't watch TV. I'm really out of it.
Anything that needs to be accessed is within me. Even if it's in a circumstance that seems outrageous, I can still just go back to the basic human experience and it's all there.
I just try to show up and be relaxed and present and honest. And that's my only trick. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Honestly, sometimes it really doesn't work.
If you're working opposite an actor who can act, then all you have to do is listen and respond.
I met Jill Soloway at Sundance a couple years ago. I was there for 'Crystal Fairy', and she was there for 'Afternoon Delight'. She reached out and wanted to get together.
Playing dysfunctional characters or crazy characters is only fun if they're well written. So I have been lucky enough to be asked to play crazy people who are very well written.
It's so nice that there's all this new space for new, good content. It's good news for us actors, since nobody makes real independent films anymore.
I had a world of people who were raising me; it was like a little village.
Everybody I grew up with has incredible self-confidence and self-assurance. We were all loud, outspoken, wild kids and were celebrated for it.
I really enjoy taking care of people, and I was really ready to have a kid, so I didn't have to sacrifice anything that I didn't want to give up.
I think it's great anytime somebody can be in control of their own distribution.
I'm basically useless in interviews because I don't remember anything. But I find it very peaceful, actually, because I have a sort of busy mind. I'm like, 'This is great!'
Oh, I'm pregnant on 'Girls.'
I just wrapped a new show for Amazon called 'Transparent.'
I made a lot of movies that people loved when I was a kid, but I didn't have any real relationship to them.
I didn't even realize that I was interested in film until I was in college, and since then, I've had a very uncertain and sort of lost decade.
'Crystal Fairy' was one of the first movies I did after I recommitted to the idea of acting.
It was sort of a solution to financial problems when I was a little kid. I just kept doing it because it's fun to be on movie sets.
Television has filled the space for actors that really want to make good work and not just make a lot of money and be famous for making a lot of money and being famous.
Suburbia, to me, was the most fantastical, unusual place. I thought it was Disneyland.
I was given an incredible gift growing up in the Chelsea, a space where it is completely fine to be yourself - you just had to figure out what that was. You didn't have to figure that out in the face of opposition at every turn.
I had a very long home birth. She was almost 10 pounds and did not want to come out.
I've always looked the same, and every 10 years, I'm a little bit in fashion.
I had so many faux-parents.
We all got driven out of Manhattan. It was a very conducive place for artists when I was growing up, and now it's definitely not. The city has been completely taken over by the rich.