As a real person he wouldn't last a minute would he? But drama is about imperfection. And we've moved away from the aspirational hero. We got tired of it it was dull. If I was House's friend I would hate it. How he so resolutely refuses to be happy or take the kind-hearted road. But we don't always like morally good people do we?

Overall the anarchy was the most creative of all periods of Japanese culture for in it there appeared the greatest landscape painting the culmination of the skill of landscape gardening and the arts of flower arrangement and the No drama.

The discussion in Washington has changed dramatically. I mean it's no longer a question of should we address entitlements - it's no longer a question of do we need to reduce spending in the future.

I could definitely see myself making a serious movie or a drama in the future.

What I'm concerned about is endless borrowing which is going to compromise our economy not only today but in the future. Because we know the decisions we make right now really dramatically impact us in the future and the debt is literally getting out of our control.

I like the hot-cold the sugar-salt being able to play over-the-top and dramatic things - in the same film. Just as in my life I can be very funny and at other times almost extinguished.

I watched a lot of silent directors who were absolutely great like John Ford and Fritz Lang Tod Browning and also some very modern directors like The Coen Brothers. The directors take the freedom within their own movies to be melodramatic or funny when they chose to be. They do whatever they want and they don't care about the genre.

I think it's actually a misperception that I am a comedic actress. I do more drama than comedy but very little of it has been seen. When you are in big funny movies and they do well and your little part in it kind of explodes people perceive you as a comedian.

I actually feel like for a lot of my career I wasn't able to show my comedic range. I did a lot of dramas and dramedies. I was on 'E.R.' That's not generally thought of as a funny show.

But sooner or later I'd love to do a comedy. I mean I think that you know people don't think that that's in my wheelhouse because I've sort of played a lot of dramatic stuff and that's certainly a side of myself that I want at some point in the right context in the right stuff that I find really funny.

It's interesting - I always thought when I was doing more melodramatic stuff like 'Everwood' that the directors were constantly reeling me in and stopping me from being funny.

'Funny People' is my favorite performance of myself to date. Even though it's a comedy and there are serious moments I really felt like Leo felt like a real person. It didn't feel like I was playing myself. Whether it's a comedy or drama I just try to make it as realistic as possible.

But I think Kiss Kiss Bang Bang really got that thing where if a movie reads really funny and then has some dramatic or violent or sinister stuff in it you can't forget that primarily it has to be even funnier than you read it or that other stuff doesn't work.

Especially with a comedy you've got the clear cut goal of trying to make a scene funny. It's not like drama where you're trying to achieve some kind of emotion or trying to further the story along. You're trying to figure out what's the funniest way to do something.

If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny people laugh. If it's not they don't.

As soon as you are trying to be funny or dramatic that's when things start feeling fake and boring.

Life can be dramatic and funny all in the same day.

None of us had any idea of how successful Downton was going to be. I thought I was signing up for another period drama that had a slightly modern feel. It had a freedom about it because it was coming out of the head of Julian Fellowes. Anything could happen and generally did.

The Jewish festival of freedom is the oldest continuously observed religious ritual in the world. Across the centuries Passover has never lost its power to inspire the imagination of successive generations of Jews with its annually re-enacted drama of slavery and liberation.

In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.

I don't buy into any of that hogwash. They put that out to sell tickets. It's just a classic horror movie with the Greek drama formula of good versus evil and lots of fear.

In approaching our subject it will be best without attempting to shorten the path by referring to famous theories of the drama to start directly from the facts and to collect from them gradually an idea of Shakespearean Tragedy.

Olympic Gold changed me and my life dramatically. I became a celebrity overnight and people see me as a famous skater not a real person.

The most famous person in my phone is Lindsay Lohan. We starred in 'Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen' together in 2004 and we've stayed in touch.