Julia Louis-Dreyfus Has All the, Uh, Right Answers

Julia Louis-Dreyfus lends her voice to Pixar's latest animated flick, Onward—heading to Disney+ on April 3. But first, the funnywoman, environmentalist, and Seinfeld alum pauses to offer laugh-out-loud responses to Marie Claire's questionnaire, revealing her nonexistent career setbacks and questionable love advice.

1. Most gracious response to rejection/career setback: I have suffered no setbacks.

2. Least gracious response to rejection/career setback: Seriously, no setbacks.

3. The three qualities that got me where I am today: Grit, steely nerves, and the ability to fool myself into thinking I have had no setbacks.

4. Moment I felt I made it: Possibly sometime next week.

5. Most agonizing career decision I’ve ever made: To give up institutional finance for love.

6. Kind of work I’d do for free: Prostitution.

7. Change I’d like to see in my industry: That the industry would give me more jobs.

8. How did you make your first dollar? Followed the directions in Counterfeiting for Dummies.

9. Last thing I binge-watched: Chernobyl [on HBO].

10. Book that left a lasting impression on me: Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys.

11. Song that always makes me cry: “Talk,” by Henry Hall.

12. Movie with the greatest ending: Life Is Beautiful.

13. Song I’d want played at my funeral: “Bee-Bop-a-Lula,” but played really, really slow.

14. First album I bought: More of the Monkees.

15. If I could live in a foreign country, it would be: Outside of the U.S., obviously.

16. One thing I’m epically bad at: Computational approaches to partial differential equations.

17. Something better in theory than in practice: Capitalism, and also hot yoga.

18. Store I can’t leave without buying something: Ye Olde Sexxe Shoppe.

19. The three qualities I thought I wanted in a partner: A sense of humor, a moral compass, and immense, overwhelming wealth.

20. Advice to a woman with a broken heart: Suck it up.

21. Relationship advice to my younger self: Wear sunscreen. This has nothing to do with relationships, but just do it.

22. The craziest thing I did for love: I violently overthrew a small country’s government.

23. What my high school boyfriend would say about me: “She was, alas, far too good to be true.” (And then he jumps off a roof.)

This story appears in the April 2020 issue of Marie Claire.

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