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I didn't intend to introduce food so early, but she became very interested at about 5 months, and I just gave her whatever sort of nutrient-rich food I had. Her first food was smoked trout.
I think that every young person is a little mentally ill, you know? If we're not totally shutting down, we're all a little bit mentally ill in our twenties and maybe into our early thirties.
It's hard to live in a blind and aimless - or dishonest, rather - narrative when somebody in your family is going farther toward - or at least think they are and say they are - their true self.
I was never that famous, but I do think going to college and really getting away from the business and taking a true break is incredibly, incredibly important if you start acting at a young age.
I went to school to study literature and writing, even though I didn't end up really doing that in the end. I thought I would be a teacher, but I didn't really think about it in any practical way.
I don't think there is anybody who's watching television right now who wants to see something because it looks good rather than feel something because it feels right or familiar or new or whatever.
It's true that most people in the trans community don't have the incredible wealth and privilege that Caitlyn does. I don't think that, in any way, diminishes her struggle in her own transitioning.
If you don't have a healthy relationship with yourself, how can you with anyone else? Even if it's not healthy, I imagine it's a lot of fun. And healthy or not, I still think there can be a lot of love.
I was obsessed with the idea of going to college. And I took many years off after that, so I sort of missed the weird, crazy transition that was what making movies was in the nineties to what's happening now.
I think I happened to work with sort of a bunch of slightly difficult male directors when I was a kid. I've since worked with lots of male directors that I love, so I no longer see the distinction gender-wise.
Every scene is on the table to collaborate on, to pick apart, to try a million different ways. Usually, what ends up occurring in the end is something that no single person knew would happen or had planned for.
Her mother, Laurie Simmons, is a contemporary artist, and my stepmother, Cindy Sherman, is a photographer, so they've known each other forever. Lena and I were often at the same dinner parties when we were kids.
I basically took six or seven years off, but then I had another five or four of me not working at all because I was in school. It was really 13 years of me not working at all... I really couldn't even think about it.
I think that the fact that we had a trans woman on the cover of 'Vanity Fair'... is only good for the trans community. I can't imagine that the more we talk about this that it's not just doing everybody a lot of good.
I thought, I'm just going to give as much attention and curiosity to acting as I did to like making my coffee in the morning and see how that feels, rather than resisting it and angsting, and it turned out it felt great.
I was given an incredible gift growing up in the Chelsea, a space where it is completely fine to be yourself - you just had to figure out what that was. You didn't have to figure that out in the face of opposition at every turn.
It wasn't until I was in college that I even realized how much I loved film and started to appreciate acting, this beautiful medium of artistic expression. All I wanted to do was go to college, and I thought I wanted to be a teacher.
Here in America, just as we see such incredible progress happening in one state, we see another state passing absolutely disgusting and oppressive laws against the rights of all sorts of people - transgender people, gay people, women.
The amount of attention and sensitivity and education that we're getting in terms of specifically the transgender community is great, and certainly that's new to me. But it's not incredibly unfamiliar. I grew up in downtown New York in the '80s.
My mother is the sort of a person who has no boundaries and no filter. She also has a big ego, but it's a very unique one. And I grew up with lots of artists in an environment where conformity and the norm were totally not what anybody was after.
I'd started acting as a child. But I wanted to see if it was something my true personality was interested in. I stepped away from offers when I took five years off to go to college. I've only really just decided to whole-heartedly embrace acting.
My mom was a single mother, raising my sister and me. My mom has an incredible talent for living in the world without traditional structure, and her friend, who was in advertising, put me in a commercial when I was five. It was just to make money.
I don't think it should be allowed for people to start working at a young age and not take the time to just be living as themselves in the real world, especially now in this new age of new media and the obsession with celebrity. I think it's a real crime.
I was anxious before I decided to go back to acting about what I wanted to do with my life. Once I realized I was sort of interested in acting, I've been pretty lucky and had all these great parts. And I feel pretty much like, 'What will happen will happen.'
I've been very excited to have children for a long time. It definitely added an interesting twist to the night we screened 'Lyle' at Outfest, and I got up to do the Q&A, and I had this huge belly no one was expecting. It creeped everybody out in the best way.
I never set out to be an actor. Again, my mother presented this job by job to me at the time, and if it sounded fun, I would say yes and if it didn't, I would say no. I always knew, since I was 7 or 8 years old, that it was a means to an end and that I wanted to go to college.
I was never as famous as all these kids. There was no social media. We weren't celebrity-obsessed as a culture. I feel like these kids are under a crazy microscope; they're basically brands. And they eventually implode and act out. They need a break, and they're not getting one.
I don't revisit anything unless there's a really good occasion, like BAM screened 'This Is My Life', with Lena Dunham and Nora Ephron before she died. It also screened 'Uncle Buck', so I took my niece. I don't have a TV, so I don't happen upon old movies like you would if you had cable.
There are things to be afraid of - like extraordinary poverty and suffering beyond anything I've experienced, and climate change, despots - but there's really nothing to be afraid of when your job is an actor and you're at work, if you're in a place that is safe and full of respect and love, which we are.
I watched a lot of television as a kid, and the suburbs to me - that was exotic! Like, a mom and dad who lived in the same house and had jobs and cooked breakfast at the same time every morning and did laundry in a washing machine and dryer? That was like, 'Woah! Who are they? How do you get to be like that?'
It was like I lived in a little suburban neighborhood in the middle of New York City because I could run around barefoot or, you know, completely independently from a very young age in the safety of this building where I knew everybody and where I had friends on every floor, and I knew the bellmen in the lobby.
As an actress, vanity is your enemy. If you're thinking about how you look, you're not going to give a good performance. Once I realized, 'Hmm, I guess I'm not that vain,' it's like something I wanted to protect. I can't imagine anyone could give the full dynamic performance they're capable of and still be vain.
I'm interested in people. I'm curious about people, and of course we're curious about people whose work we respond to. So I'm not saying that I don't understand fascination with other people. But as it's dealt with in this American, modern-day culture, I find it not just boring but actually sort of destructive, really.
I wanted to live in the suburbs and have a white picket fence and my own bedroom. And a staircase - I thought having a staircase meant that you were a normal family. I thought somehow if you could transplant us to the suburbs, we would become a normal family. But in retrospect, I'm so grateful I grew up in the Chelsea.
Our parents all experimented with raising us in a fairly loose, unorthodox way. A huge emphasis was placed on creativity, and our artistic efforts were never dismissed as childish. There was a sense that we - kids and grown-ups - all had the potential to make something of value. Our drawings were not simply destined for the refrigerator.
I'm not one of those New Yorkers who so much identifies themselves with the city that they can't imagine living anywhere else. I plan to live a lot of other places, but it is defiantly is a big part of who I am. I have a complicated relationship with it. It has changed so much, but I love it, and it's my home. I'm really glad I grew up there.
I spent my twenties not really participating in the work force in any real way. I acted a tiny bit, but that was just because it was the only way I knew how to make money, and I sublet my apartment and lived in the woods and just tried to figure out who I was and what I wanted, what my real desire was and not just what I was used to doing, and it was a really confusing and painful, but really rich and amazing time.
I'm somebody who's super into psychology and analysis and the human psyche and the human experience. Other than just the purely enjoyable aspect of being on a nice, natural drug, I think doing such drug can be a very positive force in constantly forcing you to see yourself in a new way, and see and hear others in a new way. It really brings you back to square one. It deteriorates the ego, is basically what I'm saying.
I got to college in '99, and I went to study literature and writing, and so within a couple years we had Bush elected, 9/11, we were at war, so I was sort of having my political and spiritual awakening at the same time I was becoming an adult, and that's a lot of stuff at once. I became very focused on the state of the world, and I started studying that stuff more, and I just had a real identity crisis. I couldn't even really just study literature.
I do think that taking these sort of natural mind-opening and altering drugs does have an effect. Doors and windows that you didn't even know were in the house are open and you're seeing views you've never noticed before. Even though, when you come down, the world sort of goes back to the way it was, an inkling of that transformed vision and experience of the world remains. I think it's a little bit medicinal, and over time it sort of builds up a new experience of the world. That's when I think smoking pot and doing drugs is really good for you, spiritually speaking.