It's better not to try to learn all the lines by rote. It's a very bad idea, in fact. You have to do it by using the process, and as I say, the process is to learn during rehearsals, and that's how you'll do it.

I usually arrive at the first rehearsal with a vague memory of most of it. But the real work happens in rehearsal, oddly enough, because what happens is that you match the words to the movement, and once you know where you're moving, then the words that accompany that movement become not locked into your mind and your brain and your whole body.

I'd been out of the movies for years, I had had a wonderful stage career, yes, in musicals and so on, but you don't really make any money in the theater.

The older I get, the more I realize how much I have missed because I was so busy entertaining that audience and so busy pursuing a career.

All I knew how to do was to act. That's the only thing I had in my favor. That was the thing that propelled me forward.

I very seldom said no, and I was aided and abetted by my husband, who realized that the one thing I could do was to be a very good actress, by his note.

Well oddly enough, I liken the years at MGM, and I was there for about eight years, to doing stock, what we used to call repertory or stock, playing a whole bunch of different roles.