I'm very lucky to be on 'Melissa and Joey' because it's a multi-cam sitcom, and it was a nice transition from theatre because it's taped in front of a live audience.
Serial killers are everywhere! Well, perhaps not in our neighborhood, but on our television screens, at the movie theatres, and in rows and rows of books at our local Borders or Barnes and Noble Booksellers.
What theatre started to look at much earlier than any other form was the internal operations of ordinary people, sometimes using mythic models in order to tell the story.
In spite of holidays when I was free to visit London theatres and explore the countryside, I spent four very miserable years as a colonial at an English school.
I was interested in opera and it seemed to me that the only possible theatre for contemporary opera would be television. So I started working towards a kind of television kind of opera.
When I first saw a Fellini movie, I came out of the movie theatre and decided to become a lawyer! I thought to myself, it's impossible to make something so beautiful!
For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.
I'm never comfortable at theatre opening nights. If it's my own production I'm too wound up to be able to enjoy the performance and too wary to enjoy the event as a social occasion.
During my theatre days, I was more comfortable doing comedy. It's such an irony. I have always played a buffoon on stage, and yet I don't have any comic role to my credit.
I don't recall making a conscious decision to become an actor. I just remember winning a prize at a theatre festival when I was 17 and saying: 'Oh, that's what I have to do.'
When I was 16, I played Tallulah in 'Bugsy Malone' at the Queen's Theatre. Me and five others shared a flat together in Blackheath. It was brilliant being 16 and living in London with my mates.
My second husband encouraged me to go to a writing group at our local theatre. It was my 'coming out of the closet' moment.
I still think of myself as a stage actor. When I do film and television I try to implement what I was taught to do in theatre, to try to stretch into characters that are far from myself.
Through school, I saw plenty of theatre my parents weren't necessarily up on. They would prefer a football game to watching 'The Nutcracker,' and that's fine. I enjoy both.
A lot of my background is in theatre, so when you're on location, and the wind is really blowing, it's raining, and you've got mud all over you, it really keeps you on your toes.
I have a strong and strange character, and I've rarely met directors who knew what to do with this character. One of the few who did was my father, and in the theatre, Arthur Nauzyciel.
After high school, I went to the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point for a year, and I studied musical theatre. By that point, I was like, 'This is what I want to do.'
Television has dried up for my generation, so it's plays and films. You get used to being lazy doing films, but classical theatre's going to finish me off.
I want to be engaged and moved by theatre, there's nothing more disappointing than being left cold. After 'The Author,' I felt wrung out emotionally, like a used tissue.
I started acting as a child in Community Theatre but I didn't do any serious stuff. It was all musicals like 'Annie' and 'Wizard of Oz.' I was always in the chorus.
I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul.
