I spent a lot of years just learning my craft and falling down in front of the camera.

If this validates anything it's that learning how to bunt and hit and run and turning two is more important than knowing where to find the little red light at the dug out camera.

That first year at Universal was a big blur and naturally I thought they were wasting me. I didn't realize at the time that I was learning my craft and acting more easily in front of the camera.

Making a film of a work you've played for six weeks gives you intimate knowledge of the character. By the time you go in front of the camera you've worked out the behavior and life of a character.

For example I spent a lot of time with Reagan both before he ran for governor and when he was running for president. As a print reporter without the cameras I was able to really test the quality of their minds and their knowledge base.

I try not to put anything political on the forefront of what I'm trying to do creatively. At the same time I do think it's wonderful when I hear people say that it's inspirational that I'm an Indian woman on camera. My life is very diverse and my friends are a diverse group of people.

As an actor you have to have a strong vivid imagination as you're working and when the camera's rolling but there's certainly a part of you that is aware of real life that you're making a movie.

Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise everything else is a matter of degrees.

There is a part of me that still wants to go out and grab a backpack and unplug - not take a cellphone or even a camera and just get out there and experience the world and travel. I have yet to do that but someday I hope.

To not be self-conscious of your appearance is huge and something that I desperately hope to carry into film at some point in my useless life - to not be thinking 'My ear looks weird from this angle why is the camera over there?'

I think I'm becoming more relaxed in front of a camera. I suppose I'll always feel slightly more at home on stage. It's more of an actor's medium. You are your own editor nobody else is choosing what is being seen of you.

Cameramen are among the most extraordinarily able and competent people I know. They have to have an insight into natural history that gives them a sixth sense of what the creature is going to do so they can be ready to follow.

The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.

I was on the yearbook staff so I would take out film cameras and Nikons and take photos around school and at sporting events and things like that. We had a darkroom as well. I just loved it. I also saved up for a video camera to video my friends and cut and paste the videos together and I gave them to all of my friends for graduation.

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

I'm working on bringing the instant film camera back as part of the future.

The digital camera is a great invention because it allows us to reminisce. Instantly.