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I was one of those weirdos who, at six years old, was telling everybody that I wanted to be an actor. I saw my sister in a play and realized that I wanted to play make believe in front of people; I was always goofing around and putting on shows for my family.

I still think of myself as a stage actor. When I do film and television I try to implement what I was taught to do in theatre, to try to stretch into characters that are far from myself.

Some of the characters that I played as a kid were rebellious teenagers, and people would see those performances and project a particular image onto me. And 90 percent of the time, I would do everything I could to live up to that sort of image and be that individual.

What led me to be an actor is that I have a strange something in me that can drastically change the way I appear to the world. Growing up, I couldn't understand why people would always have different ideas of me - but because of that I became aware of how you can manipulate your own ability to change. And then I learned to make a career of it.

In the beginning, I didn't know if I was still a model, if I was an actress. I knew I wanted to be an actress, but it was so difficult to be believed.

I am an actor who doesn't believe in carrying an 'image' in the industry. I don't want to get trapped in an image.

I believed in myself, and I've always worked very, very hard as an artist, and I am an artist in every sense of the word.

I've always considered myself a character actor. That's the way I was trained, really.

At Cornell, my acting teacher said you cannot be religious and be an artist. I sort of got it, because faith is a comfort and art comes from a lot of places, in a lot of people, from the dark chasm.

Even though I was theatrically trained, learning to develop a character was an awesome experience.