Elisabeth Moss

“When I was 12, I didn't know about Nirvana or Oasis or any of those people. I was listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Gershwin.”

“I'm so afraid of confrontation.”

“I think it's very important to do things the way you want to do them and be true to yourself, your own goals, and your own ideals.”

“I think one of my biggest influences is Bette Davis. I've seen almost every one of her films, and she's been very inspiring to me.”

“I don't feel I was ever a 'famous' child actor. I was just a working actor who happened to be a kid. I was never really in a hit show until I was a teenager with West Wing playing First Daughter Zoey Bartlet. In a way, that was my saving grace - not being a star on a hit show. It kept me working and kept me grounded.”

“I just think that good stories are stories that reflect ourselves back at us and each other.”

“It's a great dynamic. The dynamic between men and women in the workplace is really interesting.”

“Men and women are both humans, so, for me, that makes my characters and the work that I do human stories.”

“There's this whole feeling that women should be small and quiet and polite, and I don't think that's really gotten us anywhere.”

“I wish I was super-serious, anguished. I see those actors, and I am like, 'Oh God, they are so cool, and they seem so interesting.' I don't take acting that seriously.”

“Why a musician loves playing jazz or classical music or what makes them happy, and why an artist likes to paint - it's so hard to actually put into words what that feeling is of joy that we get, but that is what I get: a feeling of joy when the camera is rolling, even if I'm doing something that is not joyous.”

“I love working with male actors, and I think there's a tendency to write really interesting characters that would work solely alongside men where they would be in a man's world and have to deal with that, and it creates a lot of interesting storylines. For me, it's kind of circumstantial, but I definitely enjoy it.”

“Why an artist loves what they do is often so hard to describe.”

“I think every day there is some new actress comes out and inspires me to do something else... like Hilary Swank. After she did Boys Don't Cry, I felt this yearning to go out and be even half as good as she was.”

“We grew up with musicians coming over jamming. We had tons of instruments. So holidays were always like, 50 people would come over, and there would be a jam session with everyone playing jazz.”

“I do think that there is something about an intelligent, strong woman who also needs to be taken care of that will attract a certain kind of man sometimes. And that relationship is interesting on screen. Bad relationships are more interesting than good relationships to watch.”

“I don't think any of us could have possibly anticipated how successful Mad Men has been. When we were working on the pilot, we loved it. We thought it was special. We hoped and prayed it'd be a success. But, we didn't count on it.”