I learned how to sign because when I was growing up in California in order to get into college you needed two semesters of language to get into a University of California school.

Handsome, thin, sophisticated men often fall madly in love with larger women, we just never see it on TV.

In my fantasies, I always wanted to play the ingenue, but in reality, in my bones, I am so used to playing the grandmother that I don't feel safe or even sure that I can do it

I was scared, because I knew that in the political arena, you have to satisfy so many different types of people at once, and I wasn't sure that I could speak for everybody and be politically correct.

On The Practice, I get to do what I love to do, and I am making a contribution that will, in the end, help raise social consciousness, dispel some of the myths about being large, and change the way that people view and interact with large people

The character I play is a wonderful compilation of things I hate about myself and things I love about myself and things that I've invented to make her even more interesting than me.

Isn't it amazing how celebrity status preempts even the most ingrained hatreds?