Lily Rabe
When I was in high school and college, my other real focus was, actually, fiction writing. So in college, I had done all these seminars with these various writers-in-residence.
As someone who's been doing a lot of classical theater recently, I loved the idea of getting to run around in Steven Alan, and not be in a corset and a wig, and not have a dialect, and get to be in a 90-minute play with no intermission, and get to do real comedy.
No, I'm not feminist. I'm not, not a feminist.
I did have wonderful things to draw from, from my own experience and also just from friends and people I'd gone to school with who were very much immersed in this world right now.
It's very hard when you're doing a new play that you believe in, and you want to tell the story in the best way possible.
I had never done a 90-minute play with no intermission, so it is a bit like you get onto the train and you don't get off until it's over - and it's over very quickly, so don't miss a moment of it. That experience is very rare and specific so don't miss a minute, because there aren't very many minutes of it.
The focus of our family life was homework and what was for dinner; getting to ballet rehearsal and getting my brother to soccer.
I will say that I've been lucky enough never to have to do a job I didn't want to do, or a play I wasn't in love with.
When I was teeny tiny, I definitely had a voice that didn't quite match the way I looked at five.
Listen, a cable series is a beautiful thing because there's such amazing writing happening on television, and it's a schedule that allows you to do a play or two. There's a reason everybody wants that job!
Before I ever start a job that I'm really excited about, I usually have some sleepless nights or weeks or months. But that anticipation for a person like me... I don't do so well with a lot of time off.
All I really want to do is someday be in a western. If I could be on a horse with a rifle, I would be a really happy camper.
So, for the most part, I really like when I read a scene that scares me and makes me sweat a little bit, thinking about doing it. That's usually a good sign to me.
Truthfully, I don't know how those special effects people do it.
Mark Conseulos is so amazing.
I know it's such a boring interview sometimes with us at 'American Horror Story', but I just can't say a word. I would certainly love to be back, that's for sure. It's such a great job.
I think every script I read has something that sends me into a state of panic but that usually makes me want to do it.
I can't actually think of a job where I was relaxed the whole time. I don't think I would want to do that job. When I break into a cold sweat when I'm reading, I think, 'Oh good. That's what's supposed to be happening.'
The only thing that matters is the theater!
One of my mother's friends said to me, 'Your ex-boyfriends didn't stand a chance with you and your mother.' And I think I probably was unfair to them because she was the first person and the last person I called about every single thing. Sorry, ex-boyfriends.
For a long time I was cautious of working with my parents because I wanted to feel separate from them in the community. Now there's no more wasting time.
To be working in the theater steadily and to be recognized and appreciated by the community means the world.
Being a part of the theater community has been important to me from the time I was a child, through my parents.
It's sort of scary to work with your parents when you're in the same business. But there was something so very safe about that. Acting with her was just like working with a wonderful actress who just happens to be my best friend and also my mother.
You want to feel like people are hiring you because they want to work with you, not because of who your parents are.
I am my parents' daughter, and I always want to be. But I first wanted to make sure that I was standing on my own two feet.
I really like when I read a scene and it scares me. That makes me excited.Collection: Scare
I re-read a lot of my college writing while we were in rehearsals, and it was so strange. It was wonderful to go back and revisit that part of my life. It did kind of make me hungry for it again.Collection: Writing
I've been the victim a lot, so I've often played the person who's getting raped or murdered or abused. And so, to actually be raping and murdering and abusing people is a whole different kind of challenge, and one that was very difficult, at times.Collection: People
The truth is that's always when it's the most fun, when you're able to just be wherever you are, be whatever scene it is you're doing, whatever the incredible actors you're with. Being busy is something that I just love and thrive on.Collection: Fun
Theresa Rebeck's writing is so scarily funny. I just love how unapologetic she is with her writing: she doesn't try to make her characters likeable or heroic, she just really makes them human. Hopefully, the audience is able to love them in the end - or have whatever feelings that they want to have about all of them - but I love that she doesn't have that agenda. That is something that, as an actress, was really appealing to me; to just get to be in this group of people who are complicated and very human.Collection: Character
To get to go from stage to set and back, it keeps you feeling very present, and I think that's always such a wonderful thing in your work because you don't really have time to be as neurotic as I might become.Collection: Thinking
The flight back and forth to LA has just started to feel like a commute, I think because all the jobs are jobs that I love doing so much, and it's such a great challenge to be holding on to all these different parts and to have to be in different mediums.Collection: Thinking
For me, work is so satisfying and it's giving me so much, it's nurturing me so much, that I think it sort of makes up for the sleep depravation.Collection: Sleep
I was shooting Beyond Redemption, I started shooting American Horror Story, so I was going back and forth between Northern California and LA. That was not bad at all - that flight is like getting on the subway, it's nothing. And then during rehearsals.Collection: Redemption
Definitely haven't been doing writing. I'm so intimated by it now because I sort of put it to bed after I graduated, and I got so focused on acting. But it is something that I hope get brave enough - even if I just go back it for myself - it is something that is very close to my heart and I do hope that it's not something that is gone forever from my life. I guess that's just a choice; no one's going to that do for me, so I need to be the one to do it.Collection: Heart
Sometimes I would go home from work and just stare at the wall for a couple of hours. But, I can't complain. Whatever knocks you out working is the kind of work that I want to be doing because it's always those challenges that are the most exciting, and the things I hope to get to keep doing in my work.Collection: Wall