“Before I got Gilmore Girls (2000), I was modeling. I went in for a call and was told, “Sweetie, you need to lose two inches off those hips”. I was 14. So I just replied, “I have more jobs than I can do. I’m in high school. I can’t go to all the trouble of losing the two inches, so I’ll pass”. Someone might tell you to lose weight, but you can say no”.

I was at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for a year and I loved it. There are a lot of really creative people, there is a constant exchange of an ideas. We talk about what’s been done [in film] and all the rules for filmmaking and then we talk about how to break them.