The theater community will always remain a big part of my life, and I hope to re-join the cast of 'The Color Purple' at some point down the road.
Right after I left drama school, I had a job.
I didn't know a single musical soundtrack, really, growing up. Nobody listened to musicals. That wasn't a thing I did.
I studied drama in high school, and when I was 18, I studied at the Actors Studio in New York. Then I moved to London when I got engaged to Bryan Ferry, and I studied at the National Theatre there.
In 1954 I was on Broadway for five months in 'The Matchmaker' and went once a week to the classes of Uta Hagen, a theatrical guru whose teaching in retrospect illuminated the whole of my training at the Old Vic.
For some reason, I always get offered plays when I'm doing plays and then, if I stop doing them, people stop asking me.
The most rewarding thing is being on Broadway. I went into Cabaret as a replacement and was really challenged beyond anything I could have imagined.
I think the first role I ever played was Mr. Bumble in a production of 'Oliver.'
I had saved a lot of money working at Mrs. Fields' Chocolate Chip Cookies, ushering at the Golden Gate Theatre, and doing odd jobs so I could live in New York for a few months. If it ran out, I would have to give up and go home. It turned out OK. I got my Equity card and started working.
I did a year of 'Guiding Light', and I was going to be a movie actor or a stage actor, but not a TV actor. That just wasn't going to happen. And obviously, things changed so remarkably.
Acting on stage is still my favorite thing to do. And everyone who's been in musicals knows that there is nothing more fun.
When I started off as an actress, I did at a play at the Taper Too Theatre here in Los Angeles, called 'In The Abyss Of Coney Island.' That was more of a dramatic play. It was a small theater house. This was the first time I was literally on the road, doing a play, for four months.
I have seen Hollywood artistes like Al Pacino, Tom Cruise and Tim Burton doing theatre and Broadway shows. Cinema actors tend to go back to theatre because it gives them an opportunity to reinvent themselves.
People may know me from films, but theater is my first love. I did about 35 plays before I even landed my first screen role. I'm very comfortable on stage, and theater is not something you can just wing.
I'm convinced whenever something opens on Broadway, it's a miracle. It's a miracle that people survived.
Subliminally, I had always wanted to act. Although I had only performed in a couple of plays, I was serious about it and was subsequently trained by people like Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan.
I went to study in Spain for a year after school. It was either that or Russian, so I went for the easy option. I love Spain and go quite regularly. I've done a bit of Spanish theatre.
Peter Hall was just organizing the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was going to be an ensemble, it was going to be in repertory, it was going to have a home in London as well as in the Midlands, and all of those things were happening at that time.
Broadway was always sort of my trajectory before I found film and television - that would be really tremendous.
I was 16 and did a play at school. I was a rather good student... And then I did a play when I was 16 and completely lost all my concentration for academics.
Don't know about a cabaret act right now, would actually prefer a role in a broadway musical.
I knew I wanted to be an actor for a long time, but I was based out of Chicago and then I went to New York and I did 'The Upright Citizens Brigade' out there. I had a two-man show with a guy named Oliver Ralli who's now in the band Pass Kontrol, which is a big band out of New York.
I was a huge fan of 'Avenue Q' long before I ever dreamed of being a part of it. I saw it off-Broadway at the Vineyard and waited at the stage door for autographs!
I grew up in Los Angeles, and my first musical theatre experiences were at the Music Center in downtown L.A.
I was on a tour of a Restoration comedy in 1996, and in Moscow we stayed at the Metropole hotel, off Red Square. The food there was opulent, but in the Maly theatre canteen, there were just a few pieces of rye bread, peanuts, and gherkins. I stood in the queue and burst into tears.
