I would never ever, ever, ever, ever do it again [All My Children]. It was the scariest thing I've ever done. I have such respect for people who do it, who can do it. What happened was they caught me at a good moment. I could use the money and this came along and it was with Susan and I thought, "Susan Lucci. I have to do this.

I moved out to L.A. in July and Hot L Baltimore started in September or October. So I had done a few things. I'd done a Mary [Tyler Moore]. I'd done a Waltons. I hadn't done a Rhoda yet I don't think.

I was doing a play in New York, which we had done in New Haven, Connecticut. It was an American premiere of a play called The Changing Room written by a wonderful man named David Story. It was about a rugby team in the North of England. It got just screaming rave reviews. At that time, virtually every major critic went up to the Long Wharf Theater to see a new play like that.

But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can't. And I'm not talking about imagining what a deaf person's whole life is like I even mean just realizing what it is like for an instant.

Most profoundly deaf people have speech that is very difficult to understand.

After three days of shooting with Donald [ Sutherland], I was the only one he worked with for the first three days of the movie [The Winter Of Our Discontent] because of the crazy schedule. We [shot] a lot of this stuff, some of it incredibly intense and emotional. We had never had a conversation during that whole time. We didn't have time.

I would never ever, ever, ever, ever do it again [All My Children]. It was the scariest thing I've ever done. I have such respect for people who do it, who can do it. What happened was they caught me at a good moment. I could use the money and this came along and it was with Susan and I thought, "Susan Lucci. I have to do this.