When I moved to Los Angeles, I was straight out of grad school, and I didn't have a single credit to my name. I knew one person in town - another actor whose name is John Billingsley. I just had to audition and audition and audition. I was plugging away for 15 years. So I earned my stripes!
I did some acting in high school and then a little more in college, and it just was the thing that I felt that I wanted to do more than anything else. And then I was fortunate enough to audition for and get into Yale Drama School right after college, and I spent three years there.
I've always said and I'd be one of the first people to admit; I think there are literally thousands of actors out there more talented than I am by a country mile. I've just been fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time, and I guess I had the right look.
I remember going to audition in Toronto for a girl group. I was 15 or 16. I went in with my guitar. I had the wickedest nerves, man! I was decent, but not good enough.
I remember my very first audition for a film. I was in Seattle. They were taping the session, and I just went crazy. The director finally said, 'Zoe, what are you doing? The camera's right here. Just talk to me.' And it took that director saying that to me to change everything.
I've been fortunate enough to win the FA Cup as a player but it's taken me 15 years as a manager to get to a semi-final.
I would drive down in my Volkswagen Jetta to Los Angeles and just audition, audition, audition, audition, and hopefully get something. I did that for two years, and the third year I came down, I auditioned for 'How I Met Your Mother.'
I took a plane from New York City to Los Angeles for an audition. I met all the people. After that, I was told to have another audition, but I didn't want to go there again.
I was playing in a tournament in Brazil and an agent scouted me. He took me to his soccer school. The idea was he used it to scout players and anyone he thought was good enough he took over to Italy. That's what he did with me when I was 15.
I've had a couple opportunities where I've been on the other side of the audition process as a director, so it's really reassuring to me that it's just about who is right for that role and less about if you ace the audition. It's just about getting to know people, not about who's a better actor a lot of the time.
My mother died when I was 12, and right after, my dad died in a car crash. I was 15 and had no family. The court sent me to live with my uncle and aunt in Missouri.
I think it really takes about 15-20 selfies that someone takes on their phone before they post the right one. There was this selfie that I took where I was wearing a white bathing suit, and it was after I had the baby, and it was a sexy pic. It took about 15 pictures to get the one that I posted. So you'll see all the ones that didn't make it. And you'll see all my selfies from the past years, including my first-ever selfie when I was four years old.
I took theatre and stuff in college, then I took a bunch of different acting classes here in L.A. Sometimes when I have a hard audition, I'll call my acting coach and he'll come help me. I actually get more nervous in acting class than I do at an actual audition. It's actually a really great way to get over your nerves.
It would not be difficult to be a better ruler than I was: for I admit that I ruled badly; and even if I was fortunate enough to satisfy my subjects, I was not fortunate enough to satisfy myself.
I'm just fortunate I can compete with a lot of these guys that have been doing this on an elite level for 15, 20 years. I think it's just amazing we're even in the mix.
We were fortunate enough to shoot 'Alps' - write the script and shoot it - right after 'Dogtooth' premiered in Cannes. So we didn't just sit around and wait to figure out what to do because 'Dogtooth' was successful. We just wanted to make another film fast, so we just went ahead and did it.