Real quality in roles is very hard to come by. Any actor or actress will tell you that. Great movies are hard to come by. It's almost impossible to make one, and most people have to settle for making something less.

When you spend many hours a week working with the same people - I mean television operates on really amazing hours and the gift of that is the trust that you feel and the intimacy that you feel with the people who you're working with.

Drama is always conflict. Conflict either comes from within or without. The thing that makes a show different is the conflict manifests itself both internally and externally.

The rhythm of my career has always been very static, staccato and then silent, and then a lot of work, and then none

I think it's really odd, too, that the public is so privy to how much money the actors make and what movies cost. It seems to me to be beside the point. When I go to a movie I really don't want to think about the money. I want to see the story.

In storytelling you kind of put your nightmares up there, you put your dreams up there and people can see them better because they can stand outside of it and look at it and recognize themselves inside it. So I feel that that in and of itself is a spiritual thing.

I think that my looks through the years have served me well because I was never a great beauty and I was never cast as a great beauty. My looks were not part of my transportation - certainly not in the typical leading lady role - so I never leaned on it and I never really made that a high value.