Erin: I’m a hardcore Midwestern girl, no question about it. I like fancy French food, but I’ll also have my steak and potatoes, thank you very much!
Erin: It wasn’t my decision to leave the show, and I was very sad to see Dana go. But it was an important storyline to tell that applies to all women—something I think all women fear, and that’s huge.
Erin: My friend and I used to put on puppet shows for our parents. I loved the whole process of it — I didn’t know what I was doing, I just knew that I liked it. Luckily my parents saw that and put me in classes at Webster University’s theater for kids when I was around six. After that, I was done. I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I suppose I just needed the attention so badly that I was like “This is great! This is more attention than I could ever need right here!
Erin: Everyone goes through their 20s trying to figure out who they are. Sexuality included. Whether you're gay or straight or wherever you fall on the Kinsey scale. - On why "The L Word" is a hit show.
Erin (on who she’d like to work with): I was really impressed with Paul Haggis. I’d also love to work with Cate Blanchett and - it’s almost clich? because she’s so good - but I’d love to work with Meryl Streep.
Erin: I moved to L.A. and did a couple of pilots and a couple of series, and I was frustrated at the time, because it’s a very frustrating business, especially for women. I hit a wall, and said I’m tired of auditioning for the bimbos and young, na?ve girls. I went back to school for environmental and interior design and told my agent I was just not interested in anything unless it was brilliant or showed women as intelligent. One day my manager called and said there’s this great script you should read. My first reaction was, “Ugh, lesbians for cable? It’s going to be the “Red Shoe Diaries”; I’m not interested!” She said, “Just read it—it’s different.” And she was right - that was the only project I auditioned for that whole summer and my life changed.
Erin: I love characters that are awkward and flawed - I think we’re all kind of like that no matter how together we tend to be.
Erin (on what she does between filming seasons): I’m going to auditions, working on my writing, hoping to direct a short I just wrote. Fixing up my house, just being a sort-of normal person.
Erin: I've played a lesbian before, on “Action” - well, she was really more bi-opportunistic (laughing). We all know people like that. It was so much fun - I played Ileana Douglas’ girlfriend. It was a great show, but I don’t think the network really knew what to do with it, so it got cancelled.
Erin (on her character on “The L Word”): Dana’s entertaining, that’s for sure. On the subconscious level, she’s the sort of schadenfreude character of the group, she makes the others feel good about themselves because she has so many problems. But at the same time she’s a really good person, a really good friend. She’s very open about questions she has with her friends, especially Alice and Shane. I give Alice a hard time because she’s bisexual and I want her to pick a side, so I know where to put her, and I give Shane a hard time because she has everything that I don’t, everything that I think I want.
Erin (on her character on “The L Word”): It was obvious to me from the beginning that Dana is defensive in a very sarcastic way because she has something to hide. I think it’s very honest when you see people’s flaws because everyone has them. And for a woman who’s struggling so hard to fit in and figure out who she is, who just wants so badly to be loved...I decided to spin her that way, and in sort of a goofy way, because I think most people are goofy…She tries so hard to be cool and it just backfires, which (laughing) God knows I’ve done, so many times.
Erin (on her character on “The L Word”): Overall, I’m really proud of my work on this show - I think Dana’s a really honest character. She’s just lost, you know? It was a challenge to blend the comedy and the drama, and that was one of my goals.
Erin (on her character on “The L Word”): It’s such a joy to play Dana because she’s so complicated and she’s still figuring out who she is; she’s struggling with so many real issues and she doesn’t claim to have it all figured out. She might pretend to, which is what a lot of people do, but she’s still trying to figure out where she fits in. That’s my favorite part about her, that she sticks her foot in her mouth, she makes mistakes, she trips over her own words, she’s not even close to perfect.
Erin (on her tennis-playing character on “The L Word”): I approached it more from a psychological standpoint: here’s a girl who grew up playing tennis, and she’s really, really good at that. She’s capable of being herself on the court because she knows she’s good at it, but off the court, she has to suppress who she is.
Erin (on the advice she was given by her friends on playing her character on “The L Word”): Their advice was more emotional, around what it’s like to be out to friends and not to family. I gave Dana a backstory, which you may see bits and pieces of later on in the series. Dana’s always been a lesbian, since the day she was born...
Erin (on her closeted character on “The L Word”): But I also believe it’s one of those human conditions, where you’re hiding something that you want to be true to yourself about but you can’t, so I sort of drew on my own experiences with that.
Erin (on whether it was weird shooting intimate scenes with Lauren Lee Smith, who she’d just met): A little, but once you step into your character, it’s real - or as real as it can be with 150 people standing around. But you put that out of your mind, because you want to be true to your character, and Lauren was the same way.
Erin (on what she did after she finished filming the third season of “The L Word”): I spent some time with my family in Texas and caught up with friends in LA., started auditioning for things here and there. In January, I went to New York for a few weeks to work on Tom Cavanaugh’s show “Love Monkey” - so much fun. I love doing comedy. Third season of “The L Word” for me, not so funny!
Erin (on her family’s reaction to her acting on “The L Word”): My family has always been extremely liberal. They didn’t care whether the character was gay or straight or sexual or not; they just wanted to make sure I was happy doing the work I was doing. And my grandmother actually watches the show with her friends. She leaves the room when there’s a sex scene - not because it’s with a woman; she just can’t stand the fact that I’m actually naked on television.
Erin (on how her character dying of breast cancer speaks to all women): That’s something Ilene and I talked about when she told me the plan for the third season. It wasn’t my decision to leave the show, and I was very sad to see Dana go. But it was an important storyline to tell that applies to all women—something I think all women fear, and that’s huge.
Erin: I had friends in college who were from Manhattan and they’d say, “You’re from Missouri? Do you live on a farm?” I was like “No, you’re from Manhattan. Do you own a gun?!”
She attended Webster University’s Theater for Kids.
She got interested in acting professionally while she was an undergrad at Vassar.
Her father was an architect.
She says she would do furniture design if she wasn’t acting.
She loves reading books by Milan Kundera.
She played Dana Fairbanks on Showtime's The L Word.
She appeared in the movie “Wheelmen”.
She is a Vassar College graduate with an A.B. degree in Art History.
She is Jewish-American.
Erin (on “The L Word”): I’ve loved being part of a show that has changed the social fabric of television. Making TV that actually touches a lot of people very personally is an incredible experience. And playing this character in particular, because she has such a journey, has been phenomenal.
Erin (on “The L Word”): I did learn to play tennis, too. I played a little bit before, although they never asked me about that when I auditioned for Dana. You don’t see a whole lot of Dana playing tennis this season, but you’ll probably see a lot more next season...(laughing) because I will have taken a whole lot more lessons by then.
Erin (on “The L Word”): Kate [Moennig], Leisha [Hailey] and I work together all the time because our three characters are together all the time, and the three of us are super close and support one another.
Erin (on “The L Word”): Working on this show really forced me to question myself, because Dana’s always doing that. So I really had to face a lot of my own issues, and my own insecurities, because when you step into someone’s shoes who is so insecure, you start to feel the same way when you’re off-camera. I had emotional spill-over.
Erin's parents enrolled her in acting classes when she was a child.
Erin has a degree in architecture and art history.
Erin grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where she attended Clayton High School.
She won the Emerging Actor Award at the St. Louis International Film Festival in 2002.
Erin: I don't pick roles based on how famous they are going to make me, I pick roles based on how they're going to inspire me intellectually.
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