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1. My family was very musical. My brother is an opera singer; my parents both sang.
2. When I was beginning, a young actor could go from repertory company to repertory company. I did that and loved it. I was also lucky.
3. For a woman who’s a widow and pretty much a loner, I can walk out, and I’m surrounded by NYU kids. The energy jumps off the sidewalks, and I never feel sad or bored.
4. I really pulled back on my career when the kids were young and my husband and I made a pact never to work while the other one was.
5. Singing and dancing will never grow old for me — I’d like to do that until I’m… actually, I think I’d like to drop dead onstage. I think that’d be just great.
6. I got to Broadway a year after I came to New York. I starred in ‘Butterflies Are Free’ and got a Tony for it. Right out of the gate. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t very gracious about it. I wasn’t driven. And right after ‘Butterflies Are Free’, I got married and then started a family. I always wanted that.
7. Being a grandmother is probably the most important thing to me. I have two really rambunctious little ones, and I love spending time with them.
8. I’ve been very lucky. I wanted to be an actress, but I didn’t really have the drive to sell myself. Fortunately I had a terrific agent in New York who kept me going from job to job.
9. You learn more discipline in the theatre than you do in movies or TV. You’re on stage every night and you have to sustain your energy level tor several hours.
10. My earliest memories of Gwyneth first singing is in bed when we would make up songs. The most I could do was harmonize, like, a third above, and at two years old, she’d be doing sixths. I said, ‘Where in the world did that come from?’ She’d just make up songs.
11. I loved the first Christmas I had in England.
12. I live in New York, and when you’re older and widowed, it’s a perfect place because you just don’t feel lonely there, and, luckily, I like my own company, too.
13. My feeling is that if there are that many billions of stars, maybe someone is saying exactly what I’m saying at this moment. I don’t know. It’s not something I’m obsessed by or think about all the time, but I certainly open to thinking it could be.
14. I am always happiest in an ensemble.
15. You cannot be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, and the perfect actor all at the same time.
16. I travel so much when I work, I’ve really been happy to do ‘Nice Work’ because I feel like a true New Yorker again. I have my little regimen during the day, and I can take advantage of the museums and the things that I love. And people watching!
17. I think I have a lot of crazy layers.
18. I don’t read critics, and I don’t care what they say. You can’t let them steal your soul. You do what the director and production is committed to doing. I just think it’s terrible that critics have the power to keep people away from a good production.
19. I loved doing Shakespeare. My two favorite roles, in fact, have been Viola in Twelfth Night and Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
20. I was raised in a time where children were still seen and not heard basically, so I think a lot of us in my generation went the other way and just tried to be as much more liberal and open and we’re still paying for it.