Little Miss Sunshine

Have you ever dated a gay man?

My first kiss and the first guy I was in love with was a gay
man. It was in junior high, and he was years away from knowing
he was gay. I remember seeing him when we were in our 20s, and
he would not come out and say it. He just kept saying,
"Yeah, there's someone that I'm dating," and
saying "this person" instead of "he" or
"she." I was like, "Aw, man, let it out!"
Another really good friend of mine and I had a sexual
experience, and he later turned out to be gay too. But I look
back on it so fondly because it was one of his first sexual
experiences, so I was like, "Oh, he trusted me!" It
was a very special time.

You'll next appear on the big screen as Amy Adams's
character's best friend in Nora Ephron's
Julie & Julia

. How do you make the archetypal romantic comedy "best
friend" role memorable?

Great question, but I don't know if I have an answer. I
just kind of show up and hope for the best.
24

is so intense and extreme, and even a movie like
Sunshine Cleaning

is odd, so sometimes I just want to be the friend in a romantic
comedy where there's good lighting and I can have my hair
brushed.

Janeane Garofalo, whom you replaced as a regular on
The Larry Sanders Show

, joined the cast of
24

this season as FBI agent Janis Gold, a fellow computer whiz.
You're often asked in interviews about a romantic future
between Chloe and Jack Bauer, but what are the chances of Chloe
and Janis having a hot lesbian affair?

You really took it there, didn't you? [
Laughs

] I think the chances are pretty good.

How might that go down?

The world is about to end, stress levels are high, and they
have to blow off steam somehow. There would be some anger
involved, some tech talk, and they'd push each other up
against a large hard drive.