Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My greatest strength as a person? I guess I get caught in it a lot, but I think it's my ability to put myself in someone else's shoes.
I'm not a compulsive worker, and I've never been a workaholic, so if I have a three-week vacation, I don't want to do a movie-of-the-week.
One of the wonderful things about Shakespeare is that he trusted an audience to move quickly with him. One moment tragedy, the next comedy.
Drinking made me a lot more free sexually; the restrictions were off. I was a compulsive, compliant 'good girl' by day and a 'bad girl' at night.
I think I've proven that I'm issue-oriented and I'm not apolitical. But I'm not a journalist and I don't want to be one with that veneer exterior.
Both Mom and Dad were blackout, killer drinkers. Dad came to school football games drunk. I'd find Mom passed out in the bushes, scared and hiding.
My happiest moments are when I'm on my high wire with the Johnny Carsons of the world. I don't have that opportunity if I'm doing other people's scripts.
It was a struggle to find myself. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. There were too many defeats. I finally admitted defeat and went into therapy.
I modeled myself after Deborah Kerr for her romantic, untouched quality; Ingrid Bergman for her strength; and Kay Kendall for her wonderful sense of humor.
If you are on the right medication... stay on it and don't change. But if it doesn't seem to be working, then go to a doctor and find the right one for you.
But I will say that TV was a great education for me. It allowed me to develop techniques for getting the job done. It's the best training ground since B movies.
Film taught me an enormous amount about the internal life a performance has to have, and that life has to be real. You can fake it on stage, but not for the camera.
For me, that is what my mission seems to be in my life on earth - to be awake, to stay awake, and to bring a certain kind of consciousness to the world, and to myself.
My father was a very strong male figure to me as a child. He was very dashing, had a wonderful sense of humor and was romantically handsome in the Scott Fitzgerald genre.
The problem with 'Today' was whether it was an entertainment show. Tom Brokaw and I had that battle for three weeks. He's a purist, and I was brought in for entertainment.
NBC President Fred Silverman told me he would change my life, and proceeded to offer me a five to seven-year contract to replace Jane Pauley as co-host of 'The Today Show.'
It's what Kitty Carlisle said in her book: Don't interview people about what they do, interview them about what they love. I want my interviews to come out of the side pockets.
At some point you've got to get to yourself and say, 'Wait a minute, I've been handed this legacy but I have to become accountable so I don't hand a lot of it on to my children.'
It's an extraordinary experience to encounter the two kinds of deaths of my parents, one violent and jagged, it hits you like a tornado, the other, gentle with grace and dignity.
It hasn't been easy for me to get roles in movies after so much exposure on television. There's an anathema about TV, and breaking away from it is difficult for almost everybody.
I've never had a homosexual or bisexual experience, but it doesn't make me uncomfortable to dip into those feelings. I think a lot of women have those feelings without acting on them.
It was a stumbling career at best before the Polaroid commercials. I think they definitely, if there's a word to use, focused - pardon the pun, 'cause I don't mean it that way - my career.
I didn't know anything about 'Star Trek.' I was doing theater a lot in those days, getting my life together. I didn't watch television. So, to come in on it was a really amazing experience.
What took some time for me to figure out was how to have a life outside my career, to find a way to be inclusive rather than exclusive. It came only after years of psychotherapy and deep soul-searching.
I talk only about my journey because that's all I know. That's what the audience always pulls me back to. There's a hunger out there for the spoken journey, just to share the experience, the strength, the hope.
Before the Polaroid commercials, my image was that of a solid actress, a theater actress who could do anything. But the Polaroid commercials were high comedy... Through them I was finally noticed as a comedian.
I'm awfully tired of playing grieving people, which seems to have been my bent in the last five years. But it's an important part of my life and if I can express it in any way, I will - including doing seminars.
Tom Brokaw has friends who are actors, and yet he feels that, as bright as they are, they are not articulate. So he said how astonished he was that Sidney Poitier, with whom he'd just taped an interview, had been so articulate.
There are problems in Canada. There is a certain inconsistency in the acting. I don't mean to sound chauvinistic, but we do have a larger supply of good actors in Hollywood. There are good actors in Canada, but not as wide a choice.
The casting-couch routine has been going on for ages, from top directors to the lowliest agents. I had to attend a meeting where four actresses filed complaints against the same person over his moral conduct. It's not a funny situation.
What people don't realize is that I've been trying to get to Bethlehem since I was four years old. By that, I mean I've been trying to attain perfection since I was kid. And it took me more than 40 years to learn that it wasn't going to happen.
I give as much detail as I do about the bad times because people out there don't know that others have been through hell but then through the process of amazing grace. You hope that someone out there will hear what you have to say, and that it may matter.
I don't think anyone thought showbiz people know anything. I would suggest interview subjects, were told they weren't such great ideas, and then they would be assigned to somebody else. I wasn't given anything to do. I felt like the highest-paid dress extra in the world.
I got used to certain things that normal kids don't get used to, like, when my mother went into the kitchen for things other than just cooking. I could hear the bottle open up and I could hear the chugs. Then the next morning, none of it was discussed. You grow up feeling crazy.
I think the reason why 'Star Trek' works so well was its small family feeling. The show felt small, you could see the mistakes, you could see rocks weren't rocks. You caught them at it all the time, but you didn't care because you were so hooked to the people and to the stories. It was a fabulous show.
Tom Brokaw has been criticized for not being patient enough with me. But, in his defense, he is a news purist, and what he does is absolutely right for him. When we were thrown together, there was the matter of an actress coming in to do the news. I was missing the camera, not reading very well - there was a lot of stuff I had to get used to.
I was uncomfortable because I had never been that nude before. I had never shown my legs, and never shown quite that much skin. I always played frigid doctors or the plain sisters who got the guy at the end. What did I know from ladies in caves who ate only meat? And when the outfit came in, I never thought of myself that way. I mean, I always thought of myself as having my father's chest. I was very self-conscious.