I have been doing this since I was 10 years old. It wasn't like I was an overnight hit. I think when that happens to some actors - they just don't know what to do with themselves. You don't know how to cope with friends and all of a sudden not being able to go out. It's such a shock to your system.
After I graduated high school and came out to do 'Buffy,' I was enrolled at my mom's university, and I was going to go get a real job. I never thought of acting and never really wanted to be an actor.
I really admire the way the fans have joined me in social justice endeavours and the charitable work that I've been involved in. We've raised over $100,000 on Twitter for our non-profit in Uganda.
If I wasn't doing this, I'd be in school studying political science or socioeconomic something. I love visiting different cultures and finding out how they make up a society.
In my first movie, That Night, with Juliette Lewis, I had a scene with two other girls where we applied a cream to our chests to make our breasts grow. I was 10.
My mother would take groups of students to different countries and always brought us along, so by the time I was 10, I had been to Russia, China, Nicaragua and several other countries.
Usually, when you do video games, you don't interact with the other actors. You each record your audio on different days, and you never really meet the other characters.
We didn't have a TV in the living room and all my friends thought we were kind of weird. When they'd come over, my mom wanted to talk to them about current events.
I think people hear and feel the genuine nature of my passion for the causes. Specifically, with the non-profit in Uganda, my mother is the president, and she was an African politics professor for almost 50 years, so I think people know that I align myself with people who know what they're talking about.
When I worked with Jamie Lee Curtis in 'True Lies', she told me, You need a plan B, because when you have six months to a year off, you can go nuts. You need to have another focus.
My mom grew up in Idaho, went to Brigham Young University: they're very Molly Mormon. And my father is, like, first generation Albanian, and his parents lived in Southey and grew up in downtown Boston. My parents are complete opposites.
I think I really thought I was a boy until I was ten years old because my parents divorced when I was born, and so my three brothers were almost like my fathers growing up. So they taught me how to ride a bike and all that stuff. I really was just kind of a guy's girl and just kind of an outspoken - some could say obnoxious - in-your-face kid.
I remember having a Mike Tyson T-shirt back in the day that I used to sleep in. And there some things that Tyson did along the way that I wasn't too psyched to associate myself with. But back in the day, just as a fighter, what a dream that was to watch and root for him.
I cannot watch my own dailies, ever. I'm my worst critic. It distracts me. I can watch it when it's done, but I'm not the girl that wants to run back and look at the performance.
