Yeah, I did need a lot of breath [to play Margaret Thatcher]. I needed much more breath than I have, after all of my expensive drama school training. I couldn't keep up with her.

If you make the tough decisions, people will hate you today. But they will thank you for generations.

I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern with my looks as they pertained to my work.

The career I chose was a drama major in college, at Yale, when I played a 90-year-old woman. One of my most celebrated roles. Then I played a really fat person. I played a lot of different things. That's how I thought I loved to wrangle my talent, my need to express myself. I like to do it that way.

Everyone tries to look a cookie-cutter kind of way, and actually the people who look different are the ones who get picked up.

Well my favorite is really really sharp, extra sharp, aged cheddar cheese.

You're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but Earl Blackwell finally died, and I was on his blacklist every year for being the worst dressed person.