The legend of stage and screen on her dogs, cosmology, and co-hostingInside the Actors Studio.
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Among the pictures in her apartment is a black-and-white close-up of Marilyn Monroe from the early 1960s.
I didnt know her, but I adored her, she explains.
I never had that kind of fame.
And she remains quite busy as an actress.
Its a parade prop that she picked up while visiting a small town in Mexico.
Two tables near the interview area are stacked with printouts of the interviewers previously published work.
I thought I should get to know you and your work, she explains.
Tell me about your dog.Zoe is a rescue.
And since she was about maybe 12, shes had heart-valve disease.
But shes not in any pain.
Shes walking and she sleeps a lot.
I dont feel like her life is over.
This isnt the first dog youve had, right?Oh, my God, no.
I always have a dog.
I dont remember not having a dog.
Ive had all different kinds: male, female, large, small.
Zoe is the smallest dog Ive ever had.
Shes maybe a little bigger than a Chihuahua, like a poodle size, kind of.
She cant travel anymore now.
I usually have somebody stay here with her in the apartment and take care of her when Im gone.
I dont put her in a kennel.
Well, I shouldnt say that Ive had some pretty spectacular dogs.
Like Daisy Mae, who was a Dalmatian.
You know they get immunity from the mothers milk.
And when you feed them cows milk, they dont have any immunity, so they get distemper.
His name was Bernard; Bernard died, finally.
I had the gardener come and dig a hole to bury him in.
And the poodle came over and sat on his head.
And I pushed her up and said, What are you doing, Penelope?
Dont sit on his head.
I pushed her off again.
She absolutely insisted on sitting on his head.
I think she was making a statement.
What was the statement?Hes not here.
Thats no longer him.
In the course of a normal life, humans outlive their pets.I say they are our death teachers.
They teach us how to cope with death.
We know what grief feels like, and weve built some grief muscles.
Because otherwise, I mean the first time somebody dies, its such a shock.
Grandma died last night.
And I said, Grandma who?
I only had one grandma, but I couldnt believe that he was talking aboutourgrandma.
She couldnt have died!
I was maybe 9 or 10.
That was the first moment death entered my reality.
It was such a profound shock.
So I think going through it with animals helps us acquaint ourselves with the feelings of loss.
I just think it becomes experience.
I was in boarding school in Canada, and I was between 6 and 7 years old.
I recited Little Miss Muffet to this blackness.
I heard a lady, front row, say, Isnt she cute?
And you could relive that moment anytime?
That was the moment.
Confronting that big blackness and all that it was alive with.
Something in me woke up.
Something went,Oh.In school, I was always in the shows.
Two was well, I dont remember the order, but certainly actress.
And then veterinarian, and lawyer, and nun.
Thats quite a lineup.I eliminated veterinarian when I realized I couldnt give anyone or anything a shot.
I couldnt deal with the blood.
My idea of being a veterinarian was to pet the animals.
When I discovered my sexuality, I realized nun wasnt going to work.
That left model and actress.
I was a model from high school until I was 23.
Then one day I said, Okay, I made up my mind.
Im going to be an actress.
Im going to do a Broadway play this fall.
Do you know how to get an audition?
So I auditioned for a lead on Broadway.
You joined the Actors Studio in 1967.
What was that like?I tookLee Strasbergs private classes.
I had a career already by that point.
So I went to Lees private classes, and I studied with him for a few years.
Then when I felt I was ready, I auditioned for the Studio.
There were no Disney musicals, no musicals based on movies.
There werent as many visitors from out of town in the audience.
I remember incredible experiences, like Kim Stanley playing the moment inA Far Countrywhen Freud discovers the unconscious.
It was just one of the most bone-chilling moments Ive ever experienced!
That sort of experience was more readily available, it seems to me, to the audiences.
I thinkHadestownis really wonderful.
And I loveCome From Away.
So I said to him, Where did you study?
Thats the best training you could get.
No, its not.
So theres a lot of that.
Theyre the serious seekers.
Is studying acting useful for anything besides being an actor?Yeah.
Its useful in the way that therapy is useful: You get to know yourself.
When they first start acting, actors have no idea whats going on inside of them all the time.
They are surprised when they suddenly access something they had no idea was cooking and alive.
You have jumped between theater, film, and television over the decades.
It had been running for several months.
I was settled in.
And I thought,What is this?
It hasnt been replaced by television or movies or anything else.
So the next day, I went to the bookstore and got a book on the history of theater.
I thought,Thats what were doing.
Its that its notus/them,itswe.
All of those performances were Oscar nominated.
You were also inThe FountainandInterstellar, which are also preoccupied with these sorts of questions.
Were these deliberate choices?Well,Resurrectionwas a film I put together.
That was no accident.
But I know thats what interests me, the things you mention.
Specifically, I would have to say cosmology really interests me.
Thats what I read about all the time, from different points of view.
Do you know Michio Kaku?
Hes a theoretical physicist.
I just read a book of his calledPhysics in the Future.
How did we get here?
How did we develop?
How did this all happen?
And whats going to happen?
Have you ever visited the Natural History Museum and that sphere where you go out into outer space?
I took my kids there.Its so wonderful.
And then we were out of the Milky Way and then we were out of the whole megagalactic system.
I was just thrilled!
Its just a little piece of work about a tiny little planet.
And then later I wrote a limerick.
Would you like to hear it?
Moving to an earthbound plane: You were the interviewer on an episode ofInside the Actors Studiothis season.
The subject was your friend and co-presidentAl Pacino.
Is this a permanent arrangement, you in the interviewers seat?Oh no.
Were not replacing Jim Lipton with one person.
Were going to rotate different people in and out.
You were there when I interviewed Al, right?
What did you think?
Hes a remarkable presence, the greatest Al Pacino character of them all.Isnt he something?
Ive known him so many years.
Hes just such an original being.
Can you tell me, how did you become a writer?
But may I ask why you asked?Because Im curious: What is a writing-talent gene comprised of?
What is the ability, and where does it come from?
I dont know if its an ability so much as a condition.
I dont remember a time when I wasnt a storyteller.What does talent consist of in your case?
An ability to describe the world with words easily?
But I do know that when a person is a writer, they usually know early.
Like the moment you had as a girl, reciting Little Miss Muffet into the void.Yes.
Whats on TV that you like right now?
Have you seen that showEuphoriaon HBO?
Its by Sam Levinson.
I was in a film he directed calledAnother Happy Day.
Yes,I interviewed him.
The production is unusual.
Ninety percent of it is on sets.Ninety percent of it issex?
[Laughs] I thought you saidsex.I was shocked by it.
By the sex?More by the number of penises I saw on the screen all at once.
There were like four or five penises there on the screen in one episode.
Ive never seen that many on TV before.
Dont you feel like thats a step forward for equality of nudity?Well, its definitely that!
What do you like about the show?
He said, Yeah, mostly.
Martin Scorsese, your director onAlice Doesnt Live Here Anymore, once said his great interest is anthropology.
I sawMean Streetsand said, Thats it.
Meaning, thats Actors Studio.
That level of being real.
Thats why I wanted Marty.
He said, No, but Id like to learn.
There was a reality.
How was that achieved?A lot of it was howPeter [Bogdanovich]made it.
We lived in the town where it was shot, Archer City, Texas.
We were just the cast together, eating together.
But its not Abilene; its my daughter.
All of those things had to happen without a line.
And he said, I know.
And I said, How am I supposed to do that?
And he said, Just think the thoughts of the character, and the camera will read your mind.
Thats what the Actors Studio work is about: being real.
Because if youre real, and you feel the emotions of the character, the camera will read it.
And the audience will feel it.
The whole thing was a great experience.
Peter wanted to shoot the movie in black-and-white, and he shot it in black-and-white.
I had a career in television, Id been on Broadway, but I was a working actor.
None of us were famous.
It was artistic integrity all the way.
And yet all the unknown actors became famous as a result of being in it.
The movie made a gazillion dollars and got nominated for awards.
Now its all about the foreign money, andthismoney, andthatmoney, and keep the budget down to here.
Its so much harder to make a film likeThe Last Picture Showbecause everything is money-oriented.
You have to have names.
And I think weve lost some … artistic roots.
I didnt want to want that much acclaim.
You had said thatResurrectionwas a film you put together.
Tell me how that was made.I was in Greece working onMedea.
My agent said, The producers want to fly to Greece and talk to you.
So they came, and I told them what I didnt like about it.
It was a school teacher goes to Jerusalem and starts bleeding from the hands but its not about anything.
Do you want to do our story?
I said, No, I dont.
Wed like to start over witha new writer.
They got the new writer, and a new director, by the way.
And I met with the writer.
He came to visit me.
[Our characters] had this love affair and we didnt know each other.
So Alan said, How do we get to know each other?
I said, Well, a quick way is to get drunk together.
I was still drinking then.
But the next morning, I thought I was going to die.
And thats when the writer forResurrectioncame!
I had to crawl to the door to let him in.
We continued to develop it as it went along.
I was very invested in it.
And I feel gratified that we accomplished that.
The reviews started saying that I was the competition for that.
So Universal did what they explained to me was a straight business decision, and didnt promoteResurrection.
It was really kind of sacrificed.
Thats the way the business is.
That can happen, and you just take your lumps.
They could be acupuncturists.
They could be massage therapists, nurses.
Now, here we are, 39 years later.
This past summer I was shooting a film in Atlanta, calledNever Too Late.
Its not out yet, and it takes place in a retirement home.
There was a woman who sat next to me in one scene, who I didnt know.
Your film,Resurrection, was so meaningful to me.
And that last scene with you and the boy, Ive never forgotten.
I treasure that scene.
It wasnt just a film that I was in of somebody elses.
This was a film that had meaning for me, I mean artistically.
Its still healing people.
But of course, thats not the only way to do it.
What Marty did onAlicewas so spectacular.
Marty has a way, and I always think of his set as being like a boxing ring.
You go under the ropes, you get into the ring, and then youre sparring.
You initiated and oversawAlice Doesnt Live Here Anymore.
It won you an Oscar and broke Scorsese into studio filmmaking.
Its like that line, which I put inAlice, where I say, I mean, itsmylife.
Its not some mans life that Im helping him out with.
I wanted to somehow manifest that, express it in some way.
Do you still have physical issues from that incident?Periodically.
It flares up a bit.
But I will tell you that later on, I thought, Why didnt I say something?
So it was a pretty severe injury.
But the arrangement is, the director always wins the unspoken arrangement.
Thats called abuse of power.
And abuse of power has gone on for centuries.
Since the fall of Crete, theres been a patriarchy.
Thats not going to change overnight.
I was reading your biography, and the section aboutyour third husbandwas quite disturbing.
He broke into your house …Well, I dont know if I wrote this.
I think I did.
I called the police, and I told them that he broke in and that we were separated.
And they said, But youre still married.
I said, Yes.
Im not yet divorced.
And they said, No crime has been committed.
I said, He raped me.
And they said, A man cant rape his wife.
It was in his name, and they said they couldnt do it.
And I said, Why?
And they said, Because youre a woman.
I had already told her my husband was in the mental hospital.
They answered, What Im telling you is we aint going to do it.
So we might not realize that weve actually developed somewhat womens position in society.
The title of your memoir isLessons in Becoming Myself.
I dont feel done.
Do you feel done?
I dont feel done, but I am having an existential crisis after turning 50.Im 86.
I have no sympathy for you!
I get that a lot from older folks.
Why should you be ashamed of how many years youve been on the earth?
Ive always told my age.
I think its important toownyour age.
What does it mean to you to be turning 50?
I think about the actuarial tables probably every hour.And death is what?
What do you mean?What is death to you?
Is it something youre afraid of?
See, thats a blessing.
I just got a chill when you said that.Well, its true.
Do you know Mary Olivers poem, When Death Comes?
I like your poems, can I talk to you c’mon?
When Death Comes is a pathway for how you want to go.
]Oh, my!
[Stabilizes the mermaid with her hand.]
Crushed by a mermaid in her own apartment!Thats no way to go!
