Women are usually only interesting to studio executives when they are fecund, between the ages of 15 and 30. I decided to get through the really tough patch, around 50, by just cutting my price and playing ten years older. I didn't want to have to wait until I was an old lady to play one.

I'm interested in playing old ladies because I am becoming one. And I want to become a very good one!

I'm not glamorous, I don't have a look, I don't know anything about opera, I have no Italian, and I'm too old.

Women are usually only interesting to studio executives when they are fecund, between the ages of 15 and 30. I decided to get through the really tough patch, around 50, by just cutting my price and playing ten years older. I didn't want to have to wait until I was an old lady to play one.

Both my parents were actors. I was schooled to think that acting was an important social service, that it was something that human beings need.

When you look at me you don't immediately imagine a very very glamorous icon, so it's only in the theater that I get to do these experiments. I've been an actor about 51 years now. I've played everything from an 8-year-old black boy to a 72-year-old French matriarch, and they hardly hire you to do that on TV.

If you accept limitations then, yeah, you'll be limited. If you don't accept limitations then the horizon is pretty vast.