We realized that there's a great need in many churches to use the power of the media...There are a lot of different ways to preach. You can preach by praising. You can preach by preaching sermons. You can preach by just giving someone food when they're hungry. There are people who will never darken a church door but they will come to see a play.

It's very hard to find good and wholesome, edifying and challenging writing for the students to perform. In my classroom I strive to do that as best as I can.

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.

I got the bad press and the blogging and the email threats because people really didn't understand. They thought I was anti-gay. That's not true at all. My spiritual mom has a gay son. Even he was telling his friends "No, that's not true. She's so accepting of me." That doesn't mean I accept his lifestyle. It means I accept him as a human person and as a creation of God and a person of value.

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 gave my heart to Jesus. I accepted him as my Lord and Savior, started reading the Bible, started going to a church (and) started a relationship with Jesus.