Carrie Preston: I have a great amount of respect for what a manicurist...

Everyone thinks they went to high school with me. I take it as a compliment that I look different in every role.

Carrie Preston

different school thinking

Alan Cumming is such an amazing performer and person.

Carrie Preston

performers persons

I don't like lying around on the beach. I like to be busy.

Carrie Preston

busy beach lying

A lot of times, in film and TV, they just want you to play yourself. But, when you're someone who's more of a character actor, you get to experience what it feels like to play a bunch of different kinds of people. I find it more invigorating than challenging. I definitely trust the writers to give me the material that I will take and turn into the person that I'm playing.

Carrie Preston

giving character people

We women often gauge our own self-worth by the quality of our interactions with our lovers. And often these interactions are interpreted for, described for, processed by our women friends. Relationships are the conduits through which flows our connection with each other.

Carrie Preston

connections quality self-worth

The Good Wife was definitely the biggest surprise and gift that Ive had in a long time, and that did come out of some other work that I had done. That whole adage of work begets work actually worked in that case - it was at the very end of their first season that my character was first introduced.

Carrie Preston

wife character long

By the time I was twelve, I had started my own theater company and was doing plays in the backyard and the front yard and all over the neighborhood, so, you know, I was definitely a lifer even back when I was 10.

Carrie Preston

yards twelve play

I just enjoy the filmmaking side of things. I feel like when you're an actor, sometimes you're in other people's hands and they're in charge of your creative life. Whereas with my production company, I'm the one that gets to make those choices for how I'm gonna spend my time and what content I'm going to be creating. I definitely learn a lot, especially about acting, by producing and directing and seeing how it all comes together, and seeing the other side of things, appreciating what goes into pre- and post-production, and all those things you don't see when you're an actor.

Carrie Preston

appreciate choices creative

What I like to do as an actor is transform. It's way more fun to play characters who are completely different than me. I like playing characters who appear one way on the outside but are actually very different from that.

Carrie Preston

different fun character

I like a round nail and not too long. I like to have control of what I do with my hands. I don't want hands longer than my legs.

Carrie Preston

long

Since the beginning of time, women have had to fight for what they deserve. I'm proud to be a part of a wave of strong women on TV!

Carrie Preston

strong-women proud fighting

A lot of people probably don't realize how difficult it is to stick to that lawyer speak when you're not a lawyer. I see everyone on 'The Good Wife' - everyone, people who have been there since day one - struggling with that language because it is just not how people talk.

Carrie Preston

day good you wife

I think that in order for anything to work on television, you have to have conflict. Nothing can be too happy or it's boring. People don't want to watch that - they want to watch things that are exciting and dangerous and sexy and have tension.

Carrie Preston

you sexy work people

I have a recurring role on 'Person of Interest,' which is my husband's show. I play the love of his life. It was really fun to do that.

Carrie Preston

husband fun love life

When you're doing a play that's fully produced, you have the benefit of rehearsing for four or five weeks, so you really get to live in the skin of the character for much longer than when you first start doing a character on TV.

Carrie Preston

skin live you character

'Emeril' came on the air right when a new president of NBC was taking over, and there was just a big shift going on. And then 9/11 happened, and that really pretty much killed it, because the show was already having a hard time finding an audience. I don't regret it. I had a really good time.

Carrie Preston

new good regret time

I shot all my stuff on 'Arrested Development' in one day, and was brought into a really well-oiled machine. 'Cause it was the last season, and they were wrapping up a lot of stuff because they knew at that point that they weren't coming back. There seemed to be kind of a freedom, and certainly the cast had a great amount of camaraderie.

Carrie Preston

day great be-kind freedom

I like being able to marry the actor and the technician inside of me. It's really fulfilling. It exercises all of my creative muscles.

Carrie Preston

inside like me creative

Kellie Overbey gave me this play called 'Girl Talk.' I read it and totally fell in love with the characters. I told her she had to let me direct it and put Marcia DeBonis in it.

Carrie Preston

me girl play love

I'm a character actor and I get lost in these characters, so I think it's only recently that people have begun to connect dots and go, 'Oh, that's the same person that did this, this, this, this and this!' which I take as a compliment. One time somebody called me an illusionist, and that was the nicest thing anyone has ever said.

Carrie Preston

me time character people

I have a great amount of respect for what a manicurist does - now, when I go and get my own nails done at a nail salon, I have a lot of respect for what they're doing. Especially any kind of intricate work that they're doing is... it's a real art form.