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.

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.”

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

Of course I would change anything if John Cassavetes said so - it's his script. But he was very easy about that.

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.

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.

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.