In Yale they convinced me I had no talent, even though I was always working. They cast me mostly as prostitutes and old women, and I stayed because I loved the writers. I loved Chris Durang and Wendy Wasserstein. I was always doing their work in the Yale Cabaret.

After I left Yale, we were all doing these mad plays off - off Broadway. And I got back to that feeling I had from college, of everyone making up in front of one cracked mirror, which is what I loved - the scrappy theater idea. I think off-off Broadway healed me, made me an actor again, and I was in so many different crazy shows.

I worked hard and made my own way, just as my father had. And just, I'm sure, as he hoped I would. I learned, from observing him, the satisfaction that comes from striving and seeing a dream fulfilled.

Art school is a very difficult thing to run in a generous, humane way, because academic power is somehow very corrupting.

It is one proof of a good education and of true refinement of feeling, to respect antiquity.

I'm very happy with the opportunities I've had.

When I was in college, I was an English major, but I was part of this great group at Stanford called the Company. We didn't know any better, so we did it all; we did King Lear, we did Hamlet, new plays ... And we did it all in a covered wagon that we took around the Bay Area. We all put our makeup on in one cracked mirror. It was the most fun I've ever had.