Good performance is about the capacity to focus and concentrate.
Betty Buckley
If we're for one another, we're feminists. The rest is semantics.
It's just a little ranch. Thirty-five acres. In Texas, if it's not a thousand acres, it's considered a ranchette.
Feminism - the word - can give us a handle, a rallying point, a common ground, and help us build a bridge. Why not claim the gift of the word as a place to begin?
The practice of meditation can reveal to you more of your mental capacity.
Everything good that I know was taught to me by great teachers and I feel like giving back and sharing the technique is the thing to do.
Theater, especially musical theater, is a collaborative endeavor. The success of the venture is about the team.
T Bone and I grew up together in Fort Worth, Texas. He had his own recording studio by the time he was seventeen years old. When we were both nineteen he made the first archival recording of my voice.
T Bone is genius. The way they've recorded my voice and the instrumentation to these songs is really quite extraordinary.
I had just gotten a job on 'Preacher' on AMC and was in New Orleans starting work on that. My agent called and said 'Are you sitting down?' and I said 'No' and he said 'Scott Rudin wants you to do 'Hello, Dolly!' and all I could say was 'Oh my God, I'll have to call you back.'
I am wearing Santo Loquasto's beautiful costumes. I get to stand on stage at 71 years old wearing the most darling dance boots. I am working with my dresser, who is the best dresser on Broadway; he's traveling with me. It's divine. It doesn't get better than this.
My whole process is based on meditation as well as listening really closely to what the director says and what the choreographer says. I try to stay in the immediate present reality with my partners on stage, give and take reality.
'Preacher' really appeals to my iconoclastic nature because I'm a student of comparative world religions since my early 20s, so I love shows that really challenge what you think about all these things. I think it's genius. I was so excited there was a role I could play on it.
When I was in New York for 'White's Lies,' I saw 'American Idiot' and 'Hair.' I loved both of those.
For one thing, I teach my students what my teacher for twenty years, Paul Gavert, told me, 'The voice follows... the voice follows everything about you... who you are.'
James McAvoy is one of my favorite actors of all time.
Broadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer.
I did an OK job in 'Carrie' but wanted to do better.
I had no words for these feelings. And then people started using the word Ms. Suddenly, there was this handle with which I could identify myself and understand why I felt so out of whack with the culture around me.
I have never experienced racism in the feminist movement, so it concerned me to think that I was unable to see the subject clearly because I came from white, middle-class privilege.
It was critical to finding a way out. I had assumed young women knew the history of feminism and must have felt gratitude to the movement for the opportunities that the work we have done has afforded them.
Our stories are different; our pain is the same.
So, when the discussion about not using the term feminist came up at a conference workshop, I couldn't believe it. The more I listened, the more I felt the need to express my passion about my identity as a feminist.
The pure connecting factor is that those of us who describe ourselves as feminists want equal rights for all people.
The word, and the concept of feminism, was a gift because it gave me a sense of identity and a way of defining how I wished to live my life.
The work that must be done for each woman to reconnect with her psyche and to give herself a chance to live her own life is essentially the same. The realization of the equality of all races, the equality of all beings is essential.
We can't compare stories. We can only know in our hearts that we are the same. That may be the best we can do.
When there's an opportunity to do more, we must.
Well, the teacher I studied with for nineteen and a half years was a man named Paul Gavert. He was a great lieder singer, so basically I'm a trained lieder singer because of that teacher. The teacher I currently study with - since 1995 - is Joan Lader, who also studied with Gavert.
There's a lot of maintenance that goes into being a professional singer.
I love Mary Chapin Carpenter songs. I love her songs 'Come On, Come On' and 'I Am A Town', they're two of my favorite songs.
My two great loves are music and horses.
I was hugely relieved to discover there was a purpose for girls with loud voices.
The key to doing 8 shows a week is endurance, stamina.
I've been doing a lot of work with my brilliant trainer Pat Manocchia, who has a gym called La Palestra. He's trained me for every big show I've done, every demanding 8-show week role that requires stamina, like 'Sunset Boulevard' and 'Gypsy.'
Fortunately, I like hotel rooms.
My mom was a lot of a stage mother.
My father didn't want me to go to New York City, and I was determined to go. Learning to give myself the permission to be who I was in the world and to make my own choices was hard.
Theater is a gamble and a tough road.
I've studied human psychology my whole life.
People who have suffered know more about compassion.
Colin Cunningham just cracks me up.
I had been on the TV show 'Eight is Enough' for four years. Working on a show like that is like working in a factory.
I had gone to acting school for years. It was the kind of thing I had studied to do. I had worked with good coaches and trained to do this my whole life: to be a realistic actress capable of doing truthful work.
I love the Scissor Sisters.
I'll tell you something: I am such an admirer of Glenn Close.
I'll tell you, in making film, especially when you're an actress, you're always worried about how you look on film, how they light you, always working with your camera people to be at your best, with the expectations of our culture that you always look perfect and beautiful and whatever.
When I was young, I was very blessed to have this insight that my best work would be when I was an older actress. I just always knew that as a young actress.
I knew that life itself was this journey, and I've always seen it as a kind of school in that we're meant to have fun, and we're meant to grow, and we're meant to evolve and learn to be better humans and how to love each other better and how to love ourselves and become a part of a community of love on this planet.
