PAULEY PERRETTE

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 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.

Pauley Perrette: I was a criminal science fanatic and went to study it in college as well and I think that helped me on NCIS because I was comfortable with the language, I had studied criminal science in school for years.

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

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.

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

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.

The Internet is a strange, strange place that is full of lies. I would say mostly lies.

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.

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

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

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

I love math. I have little secret number tattoos everywhere. I design them.

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

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.

I was a bartender in New York and I overheard this girl saying she made $3000 doing a commercial. A kid at work told me, 'Hey, I know this director and he'd really like you!'. So I walked into this guy's office and was like 'I was thinking maybe I could make $3000' and he hired me for commercials, short films, like 15 jobs in a row.

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

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.

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.'

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 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 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.

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.

There is no telling what is going to happen in the music business in the next few years, hours, minutes, seconds. Giving artists the chance to produce and distribute their own material is great, very empowering. The technological changes that are happening so rapidly now, amongst all the opinions, are in truth, only two things, inevitable and unstoppable.