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.

If I have something I like to forget, then I forget it.

It was a period when live TV was just starting and getting popular and they took it seriously too. Not so much like TV now. They did Hemingway and Faulkner - and they’re all wonderful artists and it just was very creative at that time.

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.”

So after the Shadows he acted and directed. And it worked out very nicely. And he wrote, obviously.

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.