My dad's a filmmaker, and my mom's an actress. She was the original understudy, actually, for Harper in 'Angels in America' and did the show for about several months while she was pregnant with my older brother. And so I grew up obsessed with film and filmmaking.

My grandmother had six kids - one died as an infant - and she was dirt-poor, and all her kids got an education. And my mom grew up poor. And they both worked so hard and cultivated so much of their own happiness. I wanted to have that like an amulet. Not like armor, but like a magic feather. Like Dumbo's magic feather.

My mom's a chemist, so she's pretty smart.

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