The experience I had all those 40 years of working on Broadway and working on television, I bring it to students and I let them kind of drain me dry but they all feel at the end of the class that they are getting so much out of it. The students grow in my classroom because they feel safe. They don't feel like they're going to be yelled at.

I got on the TV show at 40 and that is something very rare. So, I know that God gave me that role (on) One Life to Live - the role of Carlotta, the role of a mom.

In grammar school, I went to eight o'clock mass pretty much like four days a week.

If I could look back at the seeds of faith, they were planted back then. I remember in my early teenage years - when, naturally, we become more rebellious, prideful, self-directed and self-willed - I had this nun, Sister Mary Martinella, I'll never forget her - only because of one thing that she said that stuck in my spirit. And it was a rebuke.

When you hit the things that are relevant to the next generation, - it's a way for young people to feel like "Somebody understands me. Church is not irrelevant. I feel that my hurts are being addressed. Things that I am concerned about are being talked about."

The experience I had all those 40 years of working on Broadway and working on television, I bring it to students and I let them kind of drain me dry but they all feel at the end of the class that they are getting so much out of it. The students grow in my classroom because they feel safe. They don't feel like they're going to be yelled at.

I was doing big roles and, yeah, everything was going great. In the midst of all that, I guess I had already become common in the sense that I became formed into what the world wanted me to be. My desires and my goals were (identified) by the world - the things that would make me (successful) in the sight of the world and would give me a status that I thought was security.