I always wanted to be an NBA ball player since I was eight years old. I kind of went on the road of sports and I ended up on the stage with the microphone. For me it's like a dream come full circle. I think some people do it because their agent tells them it's a good look to get some publicity. But myself, I eat, live, and breathe basketball.
As I got older, I'd say probably when I got to, like, seventh or eighth grade, I was living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time, and I went for an open call for an agent, a local agent out there, a woman named Joy Purvis, and she ended up picking me up.
I followed a girl I met in Japan to Los Angeles and ended up working in a motorcycle store. I quit the job one night, went to a party in the Hollywood Hills and ended up yelling at a bunch of people. Someone saw me yelling and asked me to be in a play. The first night, there was an agent in the audience who took me on and sent me out for jobs.
I actually wanted to become a model agent, and went into what ended up becoming my first agency for a job interview. They ended up suggesting I model instead. I guess I sort of fell into it.
One night I couldn't sleep. It was like 2:00 in the morning. I was thinking, 'What can I do?' I'm watching TV. I'm like, 'Let me do something else.' I'm not going to fall asleep for a few hours. What are my hobbies? There was the masturbation option. I skipped that because just knowing my kids are down the hall I felt psychotic. So, I went with watching more TV. I couldn't come up with anything. I was going, 'God, read a book.' Then I was like this, 'Where do I keep the books?' I've got nothing to do but watch TV.
The real reason we ended up getting into that type of music was our dad worked for an oil company so we spent a year overseas when we were young kids. Because of that, it was all Spanish TV and radio so we ended up having these '50s and '60s tapes, tapes of that music.
As I've written before, China's ability to be the assembly line to the world wasn't where its role in the global economy ended; it was where it began. An ability to make products cheaper than anywhere else gave way to an ability to make high end products more nimbly than anywhere else.
My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some sort of gift and when it came time to try to find a publisher I had a little bit of an "in" because I had his agent I could turn to, to at least read my initial offerings when I was about 20. But the only problem was that they were just awful, they were just terrible stories and my agent, who ended up being my agent, was very, very sweet about it, but it took about four years until I actually had something worth trying to sell.
Well, I came down to LA initially to join The Groundlings, which is an improv comedy group. I didn't get in, of course, becaue I'm not a part of The Groundlings. I just assumed that I could walk in and take over. So they said: "Hit the road Jack." And I ended up getting an agent instead. They sent me out on a couple of leads and I ended up on a sitcom and Van Wilder thereafter and then pantsless with Sandra Bullock.
I stopped watching TV because of 'The Wire.' Like, 'The Wire' ruined everything for me because I don't even want to watch anything else now.
The comedy I do on TV came from me being at art school and seeing Gilbert and George films, thinking they were hilarious. I was trying to do that, a sketch version of art, and it ended up on TV.
My agent makes 10% of what you make. When your agent tells you to take a vacation, you know you're exhausted.
I was picked up on a London street by a model agent. She took me to her office and then sent me to Paris to work in shows. It was supposed to be two weeks, but I ended up living there with my Zimbabwean boyfriend. I made enough money modeling and acting in French movies to buy a nice flat.
I sometimes think I was born to live up to my name. How could I be anything else but what I am having been named Madonna? I would either have ended up a nun or this.
I don't watch much television. My old TV agent used to always get mad at me because he'd send me out on auditions and I'd be like, 'What's this show?' and he'd be like, 'It's literally the top show on television.' I wasn't allowed to watch TV as a kid.
I got hooked on TV westerns back in the early sixties when I was about five, mostly because my brother was addicted to them and wouldn't let me watch anything else.