The finest lesson I've learned with age is that all I need is a small team of comrades who inspire me, try not to judge me, and remind me when I'm judging myself.
— Lake Bell
The only thing I liked about Christmas as a kid was the gifts; otherwise, it just seemed like a stressful time.
Most of my characters are an amalgamation of people that I've met, my family, or myself. Being a writer, you can draw only from what you know. I am lucky to have really rich and interesting people in my family for, you know, interesting family nights and great characters.
I'm organized, but receipts tend to mess up my system. They're barbarians! So I store them in a notepad.
My mom is incredibly stylish, and she gets it from my grandmother. I feel like I can't live up to how chic they are as women. They are great role models for aging gracefully, and that's a thing that is very key that I try to always emulate.
I feel very comfortable with my trajectory because I do have a life; I can go on the subway, you know? And I've been able to do that my entire career, and I have friends who are huge movie stars and can't go on the subway, and I feel like that sucks.
There are so many projects on my Dream List. I have so many things in the works, just like little ideas or collections of things or things I write or even just a title of something.
I think, in general, when you're doing comedy, you're having a good time regardless of the comedy table tennis that you're playing. I think you want that, too: you're rooting for two characters to be together, and you should feel that even when they're angry at each other, they're still in synch with each other.
I feel very lucky that when I'm burnt out of acting, I take to the pen, and I write something I want to direct. And then, when I'm tired of taking on too much responsibility as a director, I then look for an acting gig. And I've made it very clear that I'm interested in voiceover work. I mean, I'm always looking for voiceover gigs. I love that.
I think part of what I love about being an actor is getting to take on different worlds and investigate different genres and travel to different lands.
'In A World...' changed my life a thousand per cent. I feel thankful that something I believed in so much - I love dialect, so I dedicated five years of my life to making a film about it - yielded such rewards. It led to 'Man Up,' as well as 'No Escape,' which comes out later this year... two movies where I am the female lead.
Marriage is traditionally old-school in many respects. It is highly antiquated, and, that being said, beautiful.
I lean into all things that are a little off. I will always wear overalls. At this point, I find a way in most of my life to wear a jumpsuit or an overall, anything that's sort of like an all-in-one situation. I do that on the red carpet a lot.
I hate bell peppers, which is annoying because they technically have my name all over them.
I consider myself a good layman's cook. Ninety percent of the time, I'm successful with what I set out to make, and I can improvise. Yes, I own a mandoline. Yes, we have a Vitamix.
I certainly felt like my life had been enriched and had also changed forever when I took 'In A World...' to Sundance.
I'm super and very openly obsessed with voice-over. 'In a World...' was my love letter to the industry of voice-over. And in a way, I sometimes think of it as a 93-minute audition to the voice-over industry to say, 'Hey. Consider me!'
While marriage is historically associated with dire obligation and clipped wings, I've found that it actually liberates you to take on adventure and achieve your dreams. I like to call my husband 'my person.' Find your 'person,' and you can do anything!
I went to drama school in England, and you spend your first year working on the muscles surrounding the vocal mechanisms. You learn how you support it and create characters through your voice so that became an obsession. So I went to Hollywood thinking, 'Oh, I'm going to be one of the great voice-over artists.'
I have a weird obsession with wearing not just fashion sneakers, but actual sneakers that have bounce, because I want to feel like I'm in an active state.
I have vitamins I intend to take to be a better person. I even have a pillbox for them to remind myself to be healthier. But will I take them? Definitely not.
I love accents in general. I'm obsessed with dialects, and I had to write a whole movie about it called 'In a World...'
I think the greatest privilege you have as an artist is time to nurture what you want to make; that's super luxurious. For you to rush into something, that doesn't feel fun to me. I'm living life in order to be able to write about it.
Anything that is profoundly energy-shifting - like having a child - is fodder for creative thought. So for me, I welcome it and look straight into it as something to learn from.
I think of myself as a content creator and, hopefully one day, a content enabler and supporter of others, so that's what my immediate and hopefully future journey is.
You can't live in a dialect without tremendous work. Like any muscle, accents and voices and languages are all formed out of the muscles that we have in our mouths and faces and tongues.
I'm forever writing, forever looking for something to direct or produce, and always on the hunt for a great role.
Having children is not for everyone, but I think it's a beautiful lesson in it not being all about me anymore. It's a relief, in a way. It's like, this is her story now, and I'm her mom. It's a nice shift.
If I write something, and I'm going to put in all that love and energy, I want to direct it.
At a time when every series we're supposed to be DVR-ing is very important, very serious, has to do with heavy, heavy matters, I think 'Wet Hot' provides a respite to that DVR homework. It's totally the gummy bears of your programming.
When I was pregnant, I was like, 'I'm pregnant, so I'm allowed to eat everything: bagels with cream cheese for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I can have pizza for dessert.'
I collect handkerchiefs. I know that's sort of old-timey, but my mom started the collection for me, and now I have a bunch. Basically, I have a myriad of beautiful handkerchiefs, and I carry them like a grandmother in my purse. And I opt for hankies in any situation.
I was a commercial girl. In drama school, I was a mediocre model occasionally to pick up some extra cash, and because clearly I'm not six feet tall, and I had baby weight, I would mainly just would do promotional stuff.
My happy place is holding my daughter and my husband in the same hug. It really is. I'm getting emotional just thinking about it. I consider it such a privilege, and I know that I'm lucky. I never want to take it for granted.
My mother, Robin Bell, is the master of balancing the finite line between classic and creative when it comes to fashion. Mom has no qualms about unleashing the pinking shears on a vintage Givenchy dress if it means she'll wear it more once it's sleeveless.
I've always been very in tune to my voice and to other people's voices and how they express themselves vocally. And I always loved accents and dialects - I collected them like stamps.
I love Dr. Hauschka's blue mascara. It's not so blue that it's like, 'What's wrong with you?' It's more like a secret that you're wearing it.
My fiance likes drawing on napkins, which I save. I'm always scared I'll get caught taking a linen napkin from a restaurant!
What I think is sad about the rom-com genre is that it has adopted this pejorative title. I think the reason why there haven't been as many great ones is because we are fighting against the genre itself. If it is a romantic comedy then snuggle up to the fact that it can be a really earnest, refreshing feeling to feel good after a movie.
There have been times where you do the red carpet in a certain shoe, and you go into the bathroom, you take that shoe off, you put the other shoe on from your purse, and then you walk around for the rest of the night.
I don't really enjoy working in TV, to be completely honest. Even though it's incredibly lucrative, I'm just terrified of not being satiated in a myriad of different ways.
I'll be totally honest in that I feel tremendously lucky that I am offered incredible jobs all the time to direct, but the problem that I have just personally is that there are only so many years in my life to dedicate to certain projects.
I feel that being an actor is a front-row seat into seeing how everybody else makes their movies. Basically, being in the trenches for ten years is like a college-level course in filmmaking if not more. It feels like every director I work with and every set that I visit as an actor, I see someone else's definition of filmmaking.
I think the key to a great romcom is to not fight against the genre. The trend more recently has been to apologise or be snarky, so it's an anti-romcom. Just lean in and embrace the fact it's a love story, and it's funny, and it's light. It can still be uber-smart and deal with zeitgeist issues.
Before you have kids, you're like, 'I hope I don't die on this plane,' or, 'I hope I don't die crossing the street.' It's all me, me, me. 'What do I want to eat? What do I want to do?' But when you have a baby, and you would just happily stand in front of a bus to save her, it's a ferocious commitment to protecting your charge.
My mother is a beautiful writer. Writing letters back and forth with her was an athletic endeavor, and it became something I really looked forward to.
'Wet Hot American Summer' was sort of lowbrow genius, you know? But smart in its cultish silliness. It wasn't considered something of great cultural caliber. But like many cult pieces, it sort of became something culturally relevant, which I think is what's so wonderful about it.
At the end of the week, my husband and I do a leftovers dinner, where we have to use whatever's in the fridge. It's sort of a game.
My brother and I had many games. We were inseparable. We had a little team going on between us. We had even a language that was kind of like pig latin. So we'd speak in the language. It's called Op.
I am somebody who is constantly hungry to nibble on something.
