“The South was influential in my life. It helped form who I am. I went ...” — Connie Britton Quote

The South was influential in my life. It helped form who I am. I went to New York out of drama school, and I lived in California.

My dad's family was from Tennessee. I grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia, where we lived at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. As a kid, I was totally into Southern rock. Lynyrd Skynyrd. ZZ Top. It was so part of who I was.

I feel like 'Nashville' can go on indefinitely.

Let's put it this way: The older you get, the easier it is to date younger men. There are more of them.

A definite highlight was doing 'The Brothers McMullen.' Shooting that movie was such a joy - and then we wound up winning the Sundance Film Festival. That big-break moment is visceral. It happens once in a decade, maybe once in a lifetime.

I went to drama school at NYU for serious acting. So I was doing Chekov and Sam Shepard plays.

Something they taught us at drama school, and it's taken me a long time to realise it's true through practice, is that you can't put judgments on a character you're playing, especially while you're doing it.

I didn't really enter into the real world until I was probably at drama school.

I played old men back in drama school. It's just now that I'm drawing level with the age of the characters I play, but I'm fine with that, and I've certainly never envied people who became hugely famous when they were young.