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So many people bare their midriffs, I don't know why mine is such an issue.

I can always see something of myself in the characters I play.

In my standup work, I always do these characters, older people who are just off to the side. It's easier to write a story about the guy who made it to the top, but the middle is so much more interesting, so much more murky.

There was an inquiry just last week about the new Bette Midler show, and I just didn't want to do that.

I like to show the grey area in all my characters.

I guess a lot of people don't realise, but I'm always playing a character when I'm working. When you're always having people's images projected on you, who 'Daria' is as a person sort of disappears.

So I work hard to present the human side of my characters while not neglecting the plot.

I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.

It's amazing what it opens up in women when you tell them you've just played a midwife.

I always have a rough outline, but I'm shocked at how little I actually follow it. Those characters keep doing things that I never expected. I think if I crept up to my keyboard and peeked, they'd be talking about things behind my back. Okay, that's a little paranoid and delusional... but just a little.