Quotes from Ari Graynor

At the end of the day, if you're an actor, you want to act. And it's not something you can do in the living room alone. If you're a painter, you can paint at home. If you write music, you can write on your own.

By 12, my body had changed, although instead of blossoming into Cindy Mancini from 'Can't Buy Me Love,' I more closely resembled Chunk from 'The Goonies.' My inside world may have been filled with a poetic and vital feminine life force, but the outside world saw and told me otherwise.

I would love to be doing more voice-over work. It's such a fun and free playground to take risks, play around, and get sort of ridiculous.

The language can be different, but the emotional lives are the same no matter whether you're doing Shakespeare or Stoppard or something else... The emotional life is all the same.

I played a lot of dress-up in my room. I really liked being alone. I had a lot of friends, but I had an only-child, live-in-my-head personality.

In high school, everyone told me I had a great personality and sense of humor, but I wanted to be the girl who boys liked because she was pretty on top of being funny. I was boy crazy.

I was a highly sensitive kid, sort of an old soul, and I felt like a lot of people in my peer group didn't fully understand me, or I couldn't fully be myself. I just wasn't engaged in a way that was fulfilling me.

There are a lot of female characters out there that, when they fall on hard times, they sort of stew in their fears and negativities and vulnerabilities. And there's something that's really truthful about that - when I've gone through hard times or breakups, I've spent a lot of time on my couch overeating and crying with friends, that's true.

I would love to be in 'Downton Abbey.' That's the thing I thing many people would have a good laugh with me saying anything like that. I feel like that's the next phase of my career. To reprove to everyone that I can do things besides the crazy characters.

I've been really interested and inspired by Nan Goldin, the photographer.

The truth is, there are so few female roles in movies. That's really limiting. As an actor, you wanna be able to sink your teeth into something. You don't want to just be the best friend. You don't want to just be the girlfriend.

There's something innately funny and warm about being Jewish. I think it's something to be embraced and respected.

I've been calling myself 'just an actor' since I was 6 years old. That's a long time.

You look at Richard Pryor and Robert Klein and George Carlin and Richard Lewis - those guys were so smart, they were the thinking-man stand-ups.

It's such a tough business. And once people see you a certain way, it's really hard for them to change their minds about you.

I was more of the kind of babysitter that liked holding the baby, sort of playing Mom, and then putting the baby to bed and watching TV while eating everything in their kitchen.

I've always just admired women who were able to navigate through dramatic and comedic waters and sort of do it all.

As an actor, your life is constant ups and downs. My friends and I joke that when a job ends and nothing is lined up, you have nothing to do for the rest of your life. You just ride that wave.

You can't please everybody. All you can do is please yourself.

I didn't want to study theater or go to school in the city. I wanted the all-American 'Here's your quad' college experience.

When you get into comparisons in any way of, 'we want it to be like this' or 'we don't want it to be like this,' it takes away from the authenticity of what you're trying to say and what you're trying to make.

I was a precocious only child, and then I went through a fat, awkward stage for several years, so I learned to fall back on my humor and personality when I was growing up. It's how you survive, so I think it was more of a natural progression for me, developing into comedy.

Numb3rs' was a wonderful gift because I had not worked in six months. It was so fun to be on that set doing these crazy things.

For all creative people, that's sort of everyone's journey. You feel something inside, and it takes a while to figure out what that looks like and what your voice is.