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Her romantic life is defined by relationships with artists of comparable stature: Mikhail Baryshnikov andSam Shepard.
She also keeps challenging herself, even though, at 74, she has nothing to prove.
I love your most recent collection of photojournalism,Derive.
I mean, thats just aslight little book.Ive done others.
It gave me something to do during the lockdown, to just meander.
Sometimes Id walk ten or more miles a day.
I walked sometimes all day long.
Do you shoot on film or digitally?Oh no.
Do you develop them yourself?Not anymore.
I used to, but I dont have a darkroom here in the city.
Its the perfect balance for acting because photography is so anonymous and so private.
Youre not depending or relying or anything on anybody else.
It shares with acting that quality of being present, in the old Strasberg lingo.
If youre not present, youre not catching that moment.
The disciplines kind of inform each other.Derivewas a record of exceptional times.
You know what the streets of New York were like during COVID.
Everything had emptied out.
There was a spirit on the street something very unique.
People were actually paying attention to each other, and nobody was in a rush.
Nobody was racing down the street or on their cell phone.
I wonder what it was like when you first came to New York just before the 70s.Yeah!
Paris had a completely different feel.
It didnt have that kind of kinetic energy that New York had.
What was so great about it?Politically, I was out of the States.
It was the height of the Vietnam War: Nixon, Kissinger, all of that.
It was almost as if you could exhale.
Theres a similar feeling now here that things are going really awry.
Decroux was a corporeal mime.
What does that mean?Well, he wasnt a Marcel Marceau kind of mime.
None of this stuff [she raises flat palms and does I am trapped in a box gestures].
It was much more abstract.
For instance, one, which is really obscure, was a scientific research center at lunchtime.
I adored him, and he set me on a whole path of thinking about performance.
One of the common threads in your performances is an intense physicality that verges on dance or mime.
Theres something almost primordial about the way you approach roles.That could be because I never studied formally.
I mean, I didnt go todrama school.I didnt major in theater.
Now what am I going to do?I mean, I have no skills.
Theres no future for a mime.
Youre not getting booked into venues anywhere.
You were doing some modeling at the time, too, right?I was trying to.
I was never really successful at it.
I mightve had one or two paying jobs.
People told me, You should attempt to model.
I thought,Well, thatd be great, wouldnt it?,to supplement my waitress job.
But nothing ever really panned out.
Soon after, you were cast as Dwan in Dino De Laurentiiss 1976 remake ofKing Kong.
Its incredible to me that this was your first film role.
You truly were unknown a person outside of the film world.So completely outside!
And they were not interested in me at all.
I thought,Wow, thats a tough question.
I was not the jot down they were looking for.
I had just come back from Paris.
They were just going to send me home.
But then I guess they called the agency and she said, Well, youve flown her out there.
Just put her on film.
Take a look at it.
And that was that.
But I didnt know any better.
It went on for nine months.
Sometimes wed shut down for weeks at a time.
I was wandering around not knowing what to do.
I spent most of the time in that hydraulic hand.
Id been taking acting classes in New York for maybe a year at that point.
They still dont take me seriously.
Maybe slightly more seriously?Well, maybe a little bit more.
She even compared you toCarole Lombard.Yes, she did.
I really appreciated that.
It was a scene-study class.
And so I did.
And somehow she managed to survive, even in a diminished state.
I just thought,Wow, this is extraordinary.
Your face lights up when I say her name!I loved Kim.
To my mind, theres nobody better than Kim Stanley, never has been.
It was almost like a form of madness.
It was raw, and you just always got the sense that she was teetering on the edge.
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
There was kind of a febrile quality to Vivien Leigh, and it was fascinating.
I should have thought about this a lot instead of saying yes to Blanche DuBois.
There are no stops.
I just wish I had been better prepared for the experience of playing Blanche.
I pretty much drove myself mad because there was no separation.
Blanche was there all the time.
There, meaning inside your head?Yeah, through the whole thing, long after the run ended.
Some actors play parts like that and say Im done!
and go home and forget about it.
But others cant shake the character, and it adversely affects their mental health.
Youre haunted in a way.
As time goes by, it gets easier to walk away from something when its over.
But some characters just stay with you.
You may find yourself returning to them.
The same thing has happened with Mary Tyrone inLong Days Journey Into Night.
I played her in London, I played her on Broadway, and then we filmed it.
I dont know how many other times I can play these characters!
I dont know what other medium is available to me.
Nobody had ever presented me with that possibility before to actually create the character.
Its a moveable feast.
How do you bring a character from 30 to 80 onstage?
With the spirit or the energy level?
And externally, with the voice, the body language?
Howdoyou play somebody in their 30s?
Youve never done that, as far as I know.Nobodys ever asked.
If they asked, what would you say?I would say no.
I wouldnt know what to do with parts like that!
Would you say you have been selective in what you chose to act in?I wish Id beenmoreselective.
The only regrets I have are having said yes to things when I should have known better.
But you talk yourself into it because you havent worked in two years or something.
Or you think,I can do something with this.
There are probably only a third of those that I feel really great about.
Which films are in the other two-thirds?Oh, I dont want to get into them.
Were some periods more creatively fulfilling than others?Without a doubt.
I mean, the first third I would say was thrilling.
And then I hit a really dry patch for the middle third.
If I think of my work, my so-called career, its three acts.
The second act was almost across-the-board disappointing.
And it wasnt just the people I worked with that were disappointing.
It was also me.
I had children growing up, a family at home, a lot of …
I cant blame anybody but me, really.
And that tortured me.
It made me incredibly unhappy.
I think that was reflected a lot in my work.
Id be on a set and all I could think about was,I wish I were home.
It felt to me like Id come to the end of something.
I was too disheartened.
The work and the roles and the films were not interesting to me anymore.
I was disenchanted with all of it except for occasionally doing a stage play.
Youre talking about the mid-90s through the aughts, basically, with some exceptions?More or less.
The work during that time was largely forgettable.
It was a disappointment.
Were you happy with the Scorsese remake ofCape Fearfrom 1991?Yeah, of course.
I was happy working with Marty and Bobby De Niro and Nick Nolte.
It was well written.
I would put that up at the top of the list from that period.
I should have probably just laid low and quit working for a while.
Everything turned around when I didGrey Gardens.Suddenly, it all came to life for me again.
It still is, I think, a dilemma for women in this business.
Well, were about the same age, so I dont know about that.
Its like saying I was about to move into my Maggie Smith period!
Well, you know, those English dames, they can always play one of the queens!
They have a lifelong career ahead of them!
Often in the reading of the script, I would come to a moment where I could actuallyimagineplaying that.
I thought,Okay, I understand that.
What was that scene inAll That Jazz?
Thats a pretty abstract part.That wasveryabstract.
But Bobby wrote that part for me, so there was never any question that I would do it.
What was the first project on which you took charge behind the scenes?It wasCountry.
That came from an idea that I had.
Its what they call a century farm.
Suddenly, theyre being squeezed out by corporations, by agribusiness.
The very personal dynamics of that kind of loss: How does it register within the family?
Where does the rage come from?
That film actually accomplished what I had wanted, which was exposing this phenomenon.
That was the first film I really felt committed to.
It feels like a great time.
In this third act, its all very interesting to me again.
Especially inAmerican Horror Story: Murder House, the anthologys first season, where you go full Bette Davis.
Write me some monologues.
And they would write these wonderful monologues, as outrageous as could be.
Those characters were overwritten and fun to play.
And each ones so different.
The great thing about this premise was every season was a different story.
It was brilliant how they didnt tell anyone it was an anthology at first.
Were there any moments when you put your foot down and said no to something?Yeah.
A couple of times Ive said in that series, Im not doing that.
What was the hesitation?
Was it violence or cruelty or something?I think it was probably both.
In run time,American Horror Storyis equivalent to doing six feature films a year.
How did you justify it to yourself?It was a brand-new project, and Ryan is incredibly persuasive.
But it was only for that first year that I agreed to do it.
Then they came back to me and said, Would you do another couple years?
The thing thats seductive about doing something like that is theyre writing specifically for you.
They know your voice, in a way, and they know what you like to play.
And that first season, I enjoyed it.
I was in Los Angeles, and I wasnt working that much because it was a supporting character.
Yes, of course.
Id love to play Joan Crawford.
She was a fascinating character: her history, her perseverance, her toughness.
Cameramen dont light anymore; theyre shooting on digital.
Youre not going to watch dailies.
Its a different ball game.
Because its like the Buddhists say there are two certainties in life: change and death.
You cant go backward.
It was a beautiful way to work.
I want to be given the opportunity for discovery.
But you also want some guidance.
Bob Rafelson could move things in a direction that he wanted without saying, Do this, do that.
I remember Karel Reisz talking to me about playing Patsy Cline.
He said, Its like a Champagne bottle exploding: the cork blowing off, Champagne spraying.
I thought,Oh, okay.
When are you going to direct something?
Between your acting and your photography, it seems like a natural step.I dont know.
I dont know about that!
Ellen Burstyn told me shes working on her directorial debut.
Shes 91.Oh my God.
Theres another actress I admire tremendously.
You were withMikhail Baryshnikovat the time.
I think we both knew.
There was a moment … yeah.It was a great love, for sure.
Oftentimes hed be writing them at the kitchen table in the middle of the night.
There was nobody like him.
It was so easy to cast him that way.
And I think he had it in him the West.
What era would you have really loved to live in?Obviously, the 20s.
What could have been more exciting than that?
Everything was blowing wide open.
Just people living a different way.
Theyre coming out of that Edwardian era and then suddenly it just explodes.
The modern era is defined by social media, where youre consistently praised.Well, thats nice to hear.
You know, I have no access to social media, which is probably for the best.
Everybody seems to comment on everything.
Thats a rabbit hole I have avoided at all costs.
Ive always had a hard time seeing myself in the public eye.
I thought,Oh no.
Does that make any sense?
Every once in a while, youd be hounded by paparazzi, but its nothing compared to now.
I dont know how people maneuver through this today, where everything is suddenly public.
But also, I dont understand why people choose to make their personal lives public.
Why are you posting about that?
Its private, its family its whatever it is.
I guess thats just old-fashioned.
But privacy has always been incredibly important to me.
What sustains you, drives you forward?Coffee.
Sometimes thats the only thing that gets me up.
And family, I guess, more than anything.
That has always been the case.
Thats why this play is fascinating.
You, my son, have my blood.
You have my balls.
Kill, kill, kill.
I thought,Yeah, this is a Jessica Lange part.I hope I can deliver that properly!
But its a wonderful play.
I think its going to be a great challenge.
Story of my life.Probably most peoples.
And then, in this play, theres the loss and the haunting and the regret.
I saw that character as very damaged.
I wondered,What would her childhood have been like?
And I loved working with Tommy Lee Jones.
Tommy and I had done a film version of aCat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Should have been a great production and it wasnt, but we had Kim Stanley and Rip Torn.
A lot of people had trouble working with Tommy Lee, but I never did.
Nothing was ever discussed or talked about, but that something unspoken made the work thrilling always.
And I loved working withTony Richardson.He never suffered fools.
He wasnt alive when the film came out.
It sat on a shelf for three years or something.
Were you worried it would never see the light of day?Sure.
Its in some weird limbo.
Oh, is it a rights issue?
A money issue?I dont know what it is, exactly.
There have been entire recent movies that were deleted by Warner Bros.
Discovery so the company could claim a tax write-off.There should be a law against it.
Were living in a corporate world, and it certainly has rolled over into the film industry.
So much of the industry now is not about the creative process.
You look at some of the best films of the past year what do they have in common?
Theyre not from America.
My favorite wasAnatomy of a Fall.
Not too long after you won the Oscar forBlue Sky,you started doing TV.
Its not a big deal now, but it was back then.
I was offered a few really great things for television; whether they turned out great is another matter.
Deciding to do TV was similar to my decision to do stagework.
A lot of film actors werent onstage at the time, either.
I have rarely paid attention to advice over the years, for better or worse.
And a lot of the characters Ive played have a dark side.
Thats what youre drawing from.
I wish I were a happier person.
I wish I didnt have bouts of depression, but I do.
Is that why you love Blanche DuBois so much?Yes.
That sense of her tremendous vulnerability and the madness thats right below the surface.
Obviously, Blanche was close to Tennessee Williams.
I think shes probably the best character he ever wrote.
You think about her young husband, who killed himself because of what she said to him.
How do you live with that?
How do you live with that kind of remorse or guilt or loss?
To find the reason to keep going.
Mother Playbegins previews April 2 at the Hayes Theater.
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