Pauley Perrette

“In the women's movement, women needed men to stand up and say, 'This isn't right.' In the civil rights of the '60s, it took people of all color to demand equal rights.”

“I'm super-obsessed with law enforcement. I'm what you'd call a 'cop fan.'”

“Personally, I am a church-going Christian. I love my church, my congregation; it's my favorite place to be.”

“My whole goal was to be able to work in television and film and maintain a normal life, never be in a tabloid.”

“Love is a big word. I believe in Love. I believe that God is Love.”

“When I was little, I think that I wanted Superman to be my boyfriend.”

“When I was in N.Y. bartending, I was in a billion music videos. I was in Madonna, George Michael, Salt-n-Pepa - it goes on and on.”

“I've always hated criminals and crime. Life is hard enough without someone walking into your life on purpose and making it worse.”

“I always tell myself that when you're playing a character, pretend they're on trial and you're giving the best witness of their life. You really need to think about every element of the character and represent them properly, as if they were a real person. You want to give 100 percent of what they're worth and what they deserve as people.”

“I like having black hair. When I was really young, I wanted to be Asian - Asian hair is beautiful. I also wanted to look like the girl in George Michael's 'Father Figure' video.”

“My absolute favorite movie of all time is Pink Floyd's 'The Wall.' Nothing compares to it. I have seen it thousands of times and still watch it every few weeks.”

“I love working with new directors. There's so much drive and effort. It still comes down to the character for me, but if it's a character I really want to play, I would never not do the project because of a new director.”

“I started out as a writer. Poetry and prose and also kind of satirical David Sedaris-esque stuff.”

“I have a big passion about civil rights for everyone - whoever is being downtrodden at the moment, it doesn't matter: racial discrimination or sexual orientation or gender. Whatever it is, I'm there. I think I was a born civil rights activist. I can't stand the smashing of a community. It's not fair and it's not right.”

“I grew up in the Deep South, where sexism, racism, and homophobia were and still are alive and well. I have early, early memories of words and actions of this type being very painful.”

“I hated high school and got to college and realized they didn't care if I showed up because I'd already paid. So I decided, 'I'm going to turn this around.' And I did: I got straight A's and was named 'outstanding senior.'”

“I believe that what is legislated bleeds down into everything. So if the legislation continues to uphold anything that doesn't support equal rights and civil rights, that bleeds down into Matthew Shepard being murdered.”

“Each of us has the choice to attend the church we want to, or none at all. Separation of church and state allows for religions to have their own set of rules as to whom they will accept and who they won't, and the practices they support and the ones they don't. They will continue to be able to do so.”

“I ended up in college by accident. Everything in my life, I ended up in by accident. I was down south in this high school doing whatever. It could just not contain me. I quit school and took off and traveled around. Nobody knew where I was I just couldn't handle it anymore. It was a big scandal, I was gone. I left.”

“In many ways, acting is really like a science to me to figure out the human behavior of any character that I'm playing.”