I began thinking I would do musical theater because in high school that was really the only sort of curriculum they had as far as getting onstage and doing anything that anybody would see. So that's what I did.

I focused on where she was from of course, her voice and her history, her relationship with God - her religion. This was probably the strongest relationship she has had, really. She never seemed to maintain close relationships with husbands.

It's hard to know really how it's going to happen, but the career ebbs and flows and now there's a nicer feeling of interest than there has been at other times.

People were always able to look at Bettie Page and see what they needed her to be and she gave them that permission to do so. So in that way she's a feminist but I don't think she was ever trying to be.

The first people that have the information are the hair and makeup ladies and the wardrobe people, because they often have to plan out the clothes: the things that are gonna get bloody, and the different kinds of gunshot wounds they're gonna have to do. They often have more of a preparation, more time, than we do. You can definitely feel on set the actors trying to get that information, and they're of sworn to secrecy.

The process with the play, obviously, it belongs to you by the time you're stepping on stage in front of that audience for the first time. You can change it by just a look or things you're not even conscious of, but it's such a full immersion.

If my life had gone in a different direction - some of the choices you makes when you're in your teens and your early 20s, I fortunately feel that I haven't been marked by those things.