FAYE DUNAWAY

Years are not important, my dear.

You are an athlete when you're onstage. You can't get tired.

You just sort of let them go for a while, but it was time to have something done to my teeth. I'm glad. It's going to be good. Tom Cruise has braces now, too. I'm right in style.

When you're younger they always try to get you to do every ninny role that's going.

My mother's passion for something more, to write a different destiny for a dirt-poor farmer's daughter, was to shape my entire life.

I've been working on this feature script for Master Class, a play by Terrence McNally that won a lot of Tonys.

I mean, I was always interested in people like Lenny Bruce, people who are breaking the old rules and making new ones.

I'm still the little southern girl from the wrong side of the tracks who really didn't feel like she belonged.

Do you know what I'm working on now? My first feature as a director.

So many people are called but few serve as actors, you know what I mean?

Well, softness and femininity like yours people don't expect of me; so when they find me emotional and capable of real vulnerability, they're surprised.

Since Star Wars, that film's success led to bigger budgets, more hardware, that the great movies like the ones I did, which were studio movies, are now independent movies. They range from half a million to several million, and a lot of those have very interesting roles.

It's interesting as one grows older to keep in touch with the cutting edge.

I often say the last role I played that really touched me and where I was able to access what I really am was Bonnie, which is kind of sad when you think how early in my career that was.

I'm kind of a recluse.

God bless McNally, it's got some fantastic stuff in it, but it's no easy task to make a movie out of.

So Liam and movies are obviously big passions, and I read and write.

It's true, I did a lot of great movies, and I'm happy. It was what it was, and now I think all of that has fed into where I am now, and I think it has taught me a lot.

I still have, I hope, a lot of years and there are still a lot of things I want to do.

'Network' was formidable in the sense that I was playing a strong, avant-garde woman.

I think that somehow I got the notion that I had to be successful, to be the best in the world.

I'm a loner. I kind of like to be alone and do my work and, you know, be focused on my own things.

Once you reach a certain age, you realize that men aren't as important as you once thought they were.

Work is a salvation. Work is how you connect with who you are, no matter how painful it might be.

Unless you come to terms with your past... it haunts you, and you never leave it.