ON LIFE & HERSELF
• “I feel as if I go to Africa, I may never come back. I’m just going to live with the animals and adopt an elephant, and it’s going to be my friend.”

• “I was on the yearbook staff, so I would take out film cameras and Nikons and take photos around school and at sporting events and things like that. We had a darkroom as well. I just loved it. I also saved up for a video camera to video my friends and cut and paste the videos together and I gave them to all of my friends for graduation.”

• “Sometimes I feel people can move past what they’ve grown up around and their surroundings while in a place and some people need closure after they’ve left and then coming back. I’ve seen it happen with people I knew growing up that hated each other, and then years later you go home and you see them walking down the street and they have babies.”

• “I think that people vibe off your energy and I’m a pretty mellow person.”

• “What a world we live in. I want to be incredibly close to the heart of it all. To live honestly, truthfully and to be completely present is the ultimate enterprise.”

• “I definitely wasn’t cool in high school. I really wasn’t. I did belong to many of the clubs and was in leadership on yearbook and did the musical theater route, so I had friends in all areas. But I certainly did not know what to wear, did not know how to do my hair, all those things.”

• “In high school, I taught dance classes for 3-year-olds up to 16-year-olds, so between that and some bat mitzvah money, I saved up a pretty good nest egg to move to L.A.”

• “What I fell in love with as a child was ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘Funny Face,’ ‘American in Paris,’ and ‘Singin’ in the Rain.’ Just perfect movies to me and I was dancing. I started ballet when I was three. And I fell in love with those movies and fell in love with Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron.”

• “What’s great is that starting a blog can get you lot of attention for your writing. But it doesn’t have to be for anybody other than yourself.”

• “I have equal parts film and digital cameras in my collection. I think that there are ways to Photoshop photos so that they look like you shot them on film, but is that as rewarding? It just depends on the person.”

• “I’ve been lucky to travel through quite a bit of Europe and Australia, but I would love to do Asia and South America and South Africa.”

• “I didn’t take the typical path and go to college after high school. Instead, I saved up money from teaching dance classes and moved to L.A. But my family was so supportive – I never felt pressure from them. It’s crucial to find a support system, even if it’s not your family.”

• “My father was a general manager with Hyatt, so we lived in the hotel so he would be close by if there were any problems. My mum was always adamant about us not abusing it. So I still had to clean my room. Housekeeping would never come and do it.”

• “Growing up I wanted to be a mixture of Audrey Hepburn and Lucille Ball. Apparently I told my mum when I was eight that I wanted to be an actor.”

• “Halloween is my favourite. I love to dress up and that whole experience of costumes. That’s why I love my job so much. I love the departure from the normal character — the more imaginative character. I grew up in a world where fantasy, dress-up, and all those things were so deeply rooted in my sense of love and admiration; so that’s a big thing for me.”

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ON ACTING & HER CAREER
• “My goal has always been not to look forward to the next thing, but to relish and celebrate the successes I have at the moment. Whether it’s landing a part in a student film or having a good day in acting class, I never discredit anything.”

• “I think that as an artist, the more that you can do to diversify, and kind of challenge yourself, the more you grow.”

• “I sold my first screenplay six months before ‘Glee,’ but they had the option for a year and now it’s back with me.”

• “Having a dance background, I became used to rejection at an early age. Dance is very competitive, especially for a sensitive person like me. But I realized it’s better not to take it so seriously. If you beat yourself up, it’s hard to keep going.”

• “I think if I hadn’t had the dance background, it would have been much harder as a kid to be like, ‘I’m going to be an actress.’ But you’re involved with one area of the arts and other things interest you. It feels like an easier move.”

• “Going from sharing a one-bedroom place to living in a loft to two people living in a house to me having my own place by myself has kind of mirrored my career… small steps to bigger, to bigger, to now having a steady job.”

• “There was this project I really wanted before ‘Glee’ and I didn’t get cast – I went in about 13 times and I was so bummed when I didn’t get it. But then a month later I got cast on ‘Glee,’ and I felt like it was meant to happen.”

• “With every job I’ve gotten, I’ve bought myself something. When ‘Glee’ was picked up, I rented a piano for the year. For smaller victories, I’ll go to dinner with a friend, or go for a walk and think about it all. It’s important to say to yourself, Today was a good day.”

• “There are two types of paparazzi. The ones who hide who get you with your mouth hanging wide open or jumping up and down like an idiot on the street. I much prefer them to the ones who come out and follow you.”

• “I think it’s important to keep your personal life to yourself as much as you can. It protects your sanity and you need to have boundaries. And it helps that enchantment of watching an actor. If you know someone’s favourite colour or what they like to do on a Sunday, you won’t fall for the character as much.”

• “I love to travel, I love to talk to different people, I’ve had many different experiences in my life that I can draw from for films and roles and things like. It’s not dissimilar to my own life, but it’s not similar to my own life — its just finding a balance. And that’s the wonderful thing about acting: you can draw on experiences that you’ve had, but then at the same time you can turn it into something that is so different than anything you’ve ever experienced. I love that about being given the opportunity to do something different.”

ON FASHION & BEAUTY
• “I used to wear more makeup, but I’ve learned to enjoy being natural.”

• “I feel so lucky, I love my friends, I love my family, I love my boyfriend, I love my life, and I’m just very lucky to be immersed in these glamorous situations where it’s not me. Its really not me.”

• “I feel most beautiful these days, period. The older I get, the more sexy I feel and the more I know myself. Next year I’ll be 30, and I can’t wait. I just feel like I know myself more than I’ve ever known myself and that is expediently better year by year.”

• “I personally never want to be tan for the sake of not protecting [my] skin. It’s also interesting because in high school, we were the girls who lay out with the butter, oil, or whatever. We were like, “we need to be tan, need to be tan.” I think it’s so much sexier to be pale and to be health conscious.”

• “Be aware of what your skin needs. Is it dry? Is it broken out? Be proactive. There’s a reason that our generation looks so much younger. Every generation is getting younger and younger looking and [living] an extended life, because we are paying more attention to our bodies, our skin care, our everything.”

• “I drink so much water, and I eat clean foods, nothing processed. You have to make sure you’re not starving yourself and be really detailed as far as what’s good for you, like taking multivitamins and taking care of your skin. I think it all goes together, it’s not like you can just do one. Obviously, food and water are so important, but your skin can have a mind of its own, especially with all the contaminants coming at us every day.”

DIANNA’S ADVICES
• “Keep going on hikes, keep having your friends in your life, keep that downtime sacred as well because as hard as you work in any job, it’s really nice to have the relaxing de-stressors. Stress is the worst thing. That’s the ultimate demise of any good thing.”

• “Every day is an opportunity to fall or hurt yourself.”

• “If I’m traveling, I’ll take a film camera and a digital camera because sometimes there are moments where, if you’ve lost it, or if coming back and it accidentally goes through the X-ray machine and it gets overexposed, you might have had a really important moment to you and you would be really upset that you didn’t have a back-up.”

• “Once a month, try something you don’t think you’d be good at. You can find such happy surprises.”

• “I don’t believe in [preservatives] for numerous reasons. It makes me sad when I think about kids living on diets of processed foods, because nobody should be raised like that.”

• “Good things happen to those who wait. Patience and persistence. Oh, and always keep beauty essentials with you on the go.”