I love independent filmmaking. I don't agree with a lot of it, but that's the point.

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.

I read the script of [Woman Under the Influence ] 50 times. And I thought about it. And then I did it.

Never in my life have I ever even thought about anything else [ being anything other than an actress].

John Cassavetes was there at night while I was working. After they [with his friends] discussed as much live TV as they felt they needed to, they started improvising scenes just for the fun of it and one of those scenes everybody got very interested in and it turned into Shadows [1959]. That movie was entirely improvised.

So many people mistakenly think that the rest of his [John Cassavetes] pictures and the ones we did were improvised, which isn't true. He wrote all the rest of them.

I think that I was lucky to have that period of time [ like coming to New York] because everything was so exciting and new.