I think this notion of acting and glamour is getting in everybody's way.

I'm very old-school. I like a director to direct me. I like to be the actor. I'm not particularly fond of the hybrid writer-director, or actor-director. Writers, directors, actors are all such very different people. I think it's unusual that two of those people are in one human.

As an actor, you live a little bit of a cloistered life. It's a lonely life. You oddly, strangely find yourself all alone, quite often, with a lot of time to think.

I think the funny thing about acting for me - and I hold it in a very holy, spiritual way - not to be overly fundamentalist about it, but it's that important to me - is that it is an ancient healing art.

One time, many, many years ago, I had the opportunity to dye my hair brunette for a film. And the day I walked out of the hotel where I had it done, I walked out onto the street and realized people looked me in the eye and greeted me good morning. I'd never had that experience before! And I began to notice that a brunette is treated as an affable human being. Later, when I dyed my hair for Lois Riley blonde, and then Alice Ward blonde, people come right up to you, they touch you on the arm, they ask you how you're doing. Men and women both! Blondes have more fun.

It becomes more and more popular to call actors who play characters "character actors." But I've always been somebody who is much more invested in who I am playing than how they look.

There is a wealth of knowledge to be understood from others' work, don't get me wrong, and when I do stumble upon others' work, it's not lost on me.