--How did you make your way into acting? 　

When I left home at sixteen, I moved to the San Francisco Bay area. I was able to take advantage of the junior college system there. Anyone can enroll - It’s pretty cool. Therefore, even though I didn't finish high school, I could go and take classes at an affordable cost. I chose to take some theater classes and, one great thing was, there were all kinds of people in the class with me. It wasn't just 20 year olds. There was one woman in her sixties who had come from China just five years before. We had a woman in her thirties who was a single mom. We had people from all these different cultures and generations. I took improvisation classes, a theater class, and I was in a theater performance. It was all really great, but having grown up here in California, it just seemed like something I didn't really want to pursue. Meaning I didn't want Hollywood, and everything. To do so would be antithetical to all my political leanings. I played music too, so I just ended up concentrating on that. It was more the life I wanted to live. But still, I always loved the art of acting, and then I realized how much I missed it a few years ago. I had a really quick look and, by the time I'd decided it was what I wanted to do, within like a month I was cast in John Cameron Mitchell's "Shortbus". That's really how it started.

--So you appeared in “Shortbus” before The L Word. I thought it was the other way around!

Shortly after my epiphany where I realized that I wanted to act and I missed it, I was already slated for "Shortbus". Part of that epiphany did involve my desire to find work in projects that weren’t part of the cheesy Hollywood industry. I wanted to get involved in something that would be sympathetic to who I am. So, "Shortbus" kind of happened and then The L Word happened a little less than a year and a half later. At that time I didn’t have an agent, so the head shots and everything were a very do-it-yourself kind of deal.

--Did you know John Cameron Mitchell before doing the film?

No, I just auditioned.

--I saw the film in Japan last year. It was really cool. And because I was watching it with a straight audience, I was particularly moved to see you and all these other strong queer female figures appear. 　

Was it mainstream in Japan? Were people coming to see it?

--I saw it at both its preview and its general screening, and it did pretty well. I saw critics recommending it on TV, too. Was it not big in the US?

Well, it certainly wasn’t mainstream.

--I see. It was released on DVD just this past April in Japan, and one the country’s largest rental chains, Tsutaya, made quite a large push for it. Right around that time I interviewed the lead actress Sook Yin Lee. She’s very friendly - and cool. She shared information on lesbians in her own country, Canada, with me.

Sook Yin really is an astounding actress. She's a real veteran of both TV and film.

--What was it like shooting the film?

It was funny how he organized the whole thing. It was all very vague and you didn’t even know if you were IN the film or not, in a way. He had started by orchestrating a circle of friends to create a social scene for the film. There were working on it for a few years before I was involved, but apparently they realized at some point that they had no women in the movie. So they brought in a whole new round, including me.

--I have to say, they brought in the best women. How was it working with John?

I loved working with him as director. It was great. He’s a great friend to me now, too. We all went through a lot together and now, when I think of my friends in New York, a lot of them are people who I worked with on that film. Even though, we ultimately weren’t in the movie so much, we definitely feel like we were a part of creating it together with everyone. Having a communal feeling like that was good for my first film. I was very fortunate that it was so close to how I had lived before.

--Are you friends with JD from LeTigre, who appears with you in the film?

Yeah, we’ve been friends for a long time now.