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" You have to understand that when you're a voice actor on an animated film, you're really just a tiny little piece of this huge process. And when you finally get to see the finished product and see all of the wonderful work that the animators & the designers & the writers did to make your character stand out, it's just so touching, so humbling. "

Phyllis Smith

Work

Stand

" My family in St. Louis brings me to my roots. "

" It was only after I'd had some injuries that I basically retired from the performing side of show business and then began working in casting. I did that for 19 years or so before a friend of mine decided to cast me as Phyllis Lapin-Vance on 'The Office.' "

Phyllis Smith

Injuries

Business

" I used to watch, on television on Sunday nights, they had the Disney hour then and the castle coming up and 'When you wish upon a star... ' That was my very first Disney memory. "

" I feel like I'm an ordinary person, but I've had extraordinary opportunities in my later life, and I never saw any of it coming. I never saw 'The Office' coming, I never saw 'Inside Out' coming, and I just feel grateful and thankful to have these opportunities and to have an actual real enthusiasm in my life. "

" I'm just a normal person, believe me. "

" When we were doing 'The Office,' there was an area backstage where they worked on hair and makeup, and I was sitting there waiting to get ready to go on, and one of the writers went, 'I want you to audition for 'Bad Teacher.'' I went, 'Okay!' "

" To be in a Pixar movie is just great to begin with, and it has afforded me the opportunity to do a different medium because I have never done voice-over before. And I love it. "

" I'm not accomplished enough to over-analyze something, because I don't have the background as far as people who write and know how to break down a character or story and stuff. I mostly go by gut instincts. "

" I believe in angels. "

" One day, I was taken into a room with 25 animators, all working on Sadness. They asked me a lot of questions, and they got something of the way I move into the character. "

" I have said in many interviews that God had a better plan for me than I ever anticipated. I still firmly believe that, and I am grateful for a prayer answered. "

" I know how difficult it is to get one job, much less an entirely new career. I'm very blessed and grateful. It's like I'm a normal person with an extraordinary journey. "

" We're not whole people if we're just one emotion. On any given day, you can be happy, sad, angry, and so on... As you mature, you just learn to deal with each one of those emotions. "

" Even before 'The OA,' I was a very spiritual person. "

" When I was in casting, we would bring somebody in, have them read their lines, maybe give them a few pointers, and hire them, and then once they go to the set and you have a director who's directing them, that performance may not be anywhere near what you had in the audition, either good or bad. "

" As a dancer, one of my many teachers along the way made the comment that who I was onstage and who I was off were two totally different people. "

" In my heart, my first desire was to be a dancer. I always wanted to dance and I danced from the time I was 7 till I was well into my 30s. "

" When I was little, my mom would dress me up and take me downtown on the Carondelet bus, which in itself was exciting. We would go to see Santa Claus at Famous-Barr. The decorations were so pretty. The line was long, but that just gave me more time to enjoy Santa's Toyland. I loved every minute of it. "

Phyllis Smith

Dress

Loved

" I'm generally pretty happy about life. "

" I've had an experience that... I don't know the right label to put to it, if it was an angel or Jesus or what. Nobody knows anything for sure about that, but I know that I had an encounter, and I know that things exist beyond this realm, most definitely. I'm grounded in that. "

" My love for dance was so strong. "

" God truly had a better plan for me than I had imagined. You never know what life has in store. "

Phyllis Smith

God

Know

" Life is not all a bowl of cherries. There are days when you aren't going to feel up to par. And it's healthy to see it in yourself and to ask, 'Hey, what's going on?' "

" We all have these emotions, but you never really want to own up to sadness. You want to bury it. "

" Sadness is a necessary emotion. It's maybe not the most pleasant one to have, but it's cathartic. "

" If I wasn't going to be able to dance professionally, I wasn't going to dance. That's my all-or nothing personality coming out. "

" Well, I think that in every character there are little bits and pieces of yourself. "

" I did ballet, tap, jazz, modern, I taught dance here in my hometown of St. Louis. "

" I had a really fantastic time shooting 'Bad Teacher.' I loved every second of it. "