all creative writers need a certain amount of time when they're creating something where nobody should criticize them at all - at all. Even if the criticism is valid or good, they should just shut up, and let that person create. Because at a certain point you have to make it your own - not the world's, but your own.
People in independent film have a passion; they're not in it for the money.
You just can't complain about being alive. It's self-indulgent to be unhappy. When asked how she has coped since husband's death.
If I have something I like to forget, then I forget it.
So I went home and I told my mom that I wanted to quit and be an actress and she said, “Huh, that sounds fascinating. It’s wonderful!” And I told my father and he literally said, “I don’t care if you want to be an elephant trainer if it makes you happy.”
Never in my life have I ever even thought about anything else [ being anything other than an actress].
I love independent filmmaking. I don't agree with a lot of it, but that's the point.
[John Cassavetes] came backstage afterwards and introduced himself and we talked a bit, and then went for a little coffee at the Russian Tea Room next door. It just...started.
After you play a part, you think of it as your own.
I only watch my movies that I make once, so I can just see how it hangs together, but after that, I don't watch them again. A lot of people have disappeared from Earth that you've worked with, and they make me sort of sad once in a while, and there's really no necessity for me to watch them. I've made them, and it's on film and that's that.
I loved Bette Davis when I was little and when I was big and when I got old.
Every sacred cow in the business has to do with economics.
I'd wanted to be [an actress] all my life.
A Woman Under the Influence was my favorite. I loved doing that. And it was challenging.
When I went to my parents I was at the University of Wisconsin, and I just couldn't wait anymore to go be an actress.
John Cassavetes wrote A Woman Under the Influence as a play. He said, "Hey, I wrote you a play." And I said, "Great, let's read it." I read it and I said, "John, I couldn't do this every night and twice on Wednesday and Saturday".
John [Cassavetes] loved actors. He gave them a lot of freedom. So if something came up that a certain actor just felt at the moment and said - that kind of improvisation he would accept. He gave very little direction.
Of course, much easier to do a film when you're doing an extremely emotional part than it is doing it onstage over and over especially.
It was a very hard play [Woman Under the Influence] to do every night. And John Cassavetes said, "Don't worry. Don't even think about it, you're right. I hadn't thought of that." He said, "Just forget it."
I think I have the only parents in the world who would not have said something against become an actress.
It was more freedom than I think most people get when they're starting out - or even when they're not starting out. He [John Cassavetes] did his thing and I did whatever I thought.
Bette Davis had very strong opinions and was not afraid to express them. She wasn't afraid of anything that I ever saw. And she was so funny. She's just funny and she was laughing all the time.
I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which was in Carnegie Hall, which itself was exciting - just to walk into it.
I just loved Bette Davis and the fact that I had a chance to work with her [on the 1979 TV movie Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter] was momentous.
John Cassavetes was a year ahead of me but we met there. What you do when you are at a school for drama, you do a play as opposed to a final. Anyone who wanted to come could just come. So he came, and I can't remember the name of the play, of course, it was a long time ago.
