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When I still lived in Manhattan, people-watching was my hobby, and I spent many Sunday afternoons eating up the scene from a window seat at a Starbucks on Broadway.

I saw David Lynch's 'The Elephant Man' when I was 15. I was completely bowled over. I found it so beautiful, strange and mesmerizing that I went back to the cinema every night for a week to see it.

I was always such a people-watcher. I would sit on street corners alone and watch people and make up stories about them in my head. Then, all of a sudden, I was the one being watched.

When I was little, I had this old video camera, and I set it up, and I would pretend that I was on comedy shows and soap operas and things like that.

I used to like Barbra Streisand films. It was 'Funny Girl' that really turned me on, in a sense, to acting. I remember it specifically being a rainy Saturday afternoon. I couldn't play football, so I stayed in, and I watched 'Funny Girl.'

There was something about being in front of audiences when I was in elementary school plays that gave me a thrill. It was like the rush you get from a roller coaster drop.

I was watching Monster's Ball, which is a fabulous movie. It's just a little gem: beautifully shot, and shot in a way I never would have done. It made me feel very old, really, because it wasn't eccentric for its own sake, it was just very original.

I saw my first Broadway show when I was 10 years old. I saw 'Big: The Musical' and I remember going out to dinner with my mom afterward and reading the souvenir program like crazy!

You remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer.