I like trying different foods. I've done vegetarian stuff, and I've gone through meat phases, and then I do no bread, and then I eat bread. I'm really all over the place in the way a lot of actors are.
My aunt in Texas, when she did the hazing things, they had girls swallow oysters. They'd wrap an oyster in dental floss, swallow them, and then pull them back up.
It hasn't really made it easier getting film work. It's not like I can call up a studio or a producer and say - insert haughty voice here - 'It's Parker. I guess you might know me as the indie queen. I'm wondering if you have any projects for me to be in.'
Imagine if every airport would blast Brian Eno. I bet going through security wouldn't be as difficult. I can't imagine someone being aggressive with me with Brian Eno music pumping through the terminals at LAX.
I can do comedy, so people want me to do that, but the other side of comedy is depression. Deep, deep depression is the flip side of comedy. Casting agents don't realize it but in order to be funny you have to have that other side.
I like soap opera acting. If it's done really well, there's nothing better. It's old school. It's like what those melodramas in the '30s and '40s were like.
There are all these scripts where the women, if they're working, are prostitutes and lawyers with an angry streak who'll kill you. It's a reaction to women leaving their men and men being angry about it and saying it on some subconscious level.
But it's fun to be something, have that, and you don't have to be real. It's like, comedians. They go on and they're doing all these jokes. I would be like that if I were more awake.
I'm the character actor in Hollywood movies, the girl who has to be annoying so the guy can go to the other girl.
Being an indie queen, people think I have all these choices. Like I've just been sitting around waiting for the best indie film that I deem acceptable.
There are so few movies that still cast on chemistry. Now it's often, like, this person's movies make this amount of money, and this person's movie makes that amount of money, so let's put them together.
I wonder if people who see 'Blade' will have even seen my other movies. But I don't want all my movies to be in a vacuum. I need a balance because one pays, and the other doesn't.
I really liked playing a vampire. Their hunger is insatiable. Even when they eat someone, it's never enough.
There are roles out there and women out there that are fascinating to me, and there are things in our culture that I see that I want to express. It's my passion to express that.
I think to do a proper independent movie, in my experience, it takes 22 or 23 days to shoot. That was 'Party Girl' or 'House of Yes.' But now with the digital camera, the budgets have gotten smaller, and the days have gotten shorter.
People have more dimensions to them than we give them credit for. The person you meet on the street that you think is someone, and it's someone else. I'm mistaken for someone else all the time.
There are so few stories being produced that are human. I suffer with the loss of that. I feel kind of out of place, even though I've continued to work.
As an artist, you're always going to be yearning and wanting and never satisfied. I never feel like I've really achieved something.
I work with directors who haven't had the experience of being on sets as much as I have. I feel like, in a way, if it's an independent movie, I can teach the crew to kind of relax, or create a vibe. It really is about a vibe.
The five patients in 'Rethinking Cancer' share with us the path of their recovery: the courage to take their own lives in their hands with a natural approach to healing their bodies.
I make a lot of soups, and I love stews. My mother's a big foodie. She went to culinary school in New Orleans and has an oyster-artichoke soup recipe that has no cream in it but it tastes so creamy.
I was reading this book called 'Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind.' It's really, really good if you want to believe in that stuff.
I had dreams of conehead aliens when I was little. Before 'Saturday Night Live' did it. And then they came out with them, and I went on to be a glorified extra in the movie. When everyone else was laughing, I was scared.
It sounds so dramatic, but I'll say it: Hollywood just doesn't know what to do with me. And it's not for lack of trying.
You can get money and make a really cheap movie. You can, from independent financers who are just giving you money to support artists. This is what was happening in the '90s, and I was very fortunate to be a part of that.
There have been periods of my career that I haven't worked for a really long time, like seven or eight months.
It's always the girl comedy and the guy comedy. It bums me out. You'd think there'd be a progression, from James L. Brooks and Nora Ephron into more subtle humor and behavior and psychology. All these interesting things people can learn about themselves by watching talented writers comment intelligently on someone else's emotional life.