Quotes

[accepting her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Fisher King (1991)] I went to New York to study acting the summer I was 21 and like thousands of actors before me and thousands of actors after me, I went through the usual scores of moonlighting jobs and the usual scores of rejection and the usual legions of prophets of doom who were always there and always at the ready to give you the up-to-minute odds against you ever making anything of yourself in this business. And at this moment, all of those doleful memories have suddenly transformed themselves into nothing more than the sort of charming and amusing anecdotes from my memoirs!

[on stage vs screen] Stage is harder, and it pays less, and it's gruelling and I like it much better. Because on stage it's the actor's medium; film is the director's medium and television is arguably the producer/writer's medium. But on stage, you get out there, you're creating a character, nobody can pull you off, nobody can edit you and you can get deeply into a character and dwell there.

[on The Warriors (1979)] That's the first thing I ever did. I remember filming that little scene and being terrified, just a scared thing, like a quivering aspen leaf. I wasn't prepared for it.

[on Married to the Mob (1988)] The first day shooting, I got there, like, two hours early. I got suited up in all that makeup, which was a lot because we were playing Long Island mob housewives. I'd been working my five lines all that time, just pacing-pacing-pacing. Finally, just before I walk on the set, I decide I'm going to go to the bathroom one more time. So I go. And I get locked in the bathroom. Now, there's so much happening on the set that nobody can hear me knocking and calling. And I'm thinking, "I am dead in the water. I am an unemployed actress." Finally, somebody springs me from the bathroom, and I get on the set and everybody laughs, thank god. From that moment on, working on the movie was delightful.

[accepting her Tony award for Lost in Yonkers] Thank you. This is one of the great moments of my life. It's very hard to breathe. With all due respect to the great House of Chanel, the dress doesn't make it any easier!

[on Big (1988)] I remember watching Tom Hanks in the scene where he first sees himself, as an adult, in the bathroom mirror. He did at least 12 takes. Every time, he did something different; every time, believable. I was astounded by his level of concentration: Boy, that's really a superior practitioner of this craft!

[on playing Connie Russo in Married to the Mob (1988)] That was fun from beginning to end. Jonathan Demme just kept saying, "Take her further, further, further." So I did, I did, I did.

[on life as a struggling actress] I must have worked in at least a dozen places in New York as a waitress. I was a milkmaid in the ice cream corner of the Plaza Hotel; I had to wear a milkmaid's costume. I worked at Teachers on the Upper West Side, at the Buffalo Roadhouse in Greenwich Village and I did a memorable summer at the White Horse Café. I was terrible when I started, but after about five or six years I became dangerously good at it, maybe even better at that time than I was as an actress. I also passed out leaflets and modelled fur coats for a few weeks at the Sheraton. I got one job through a friend - she said, "Look, you can get $125 if you put on a costume and be the Sauza Tequila rooster at the Coliseum." It was for the New York ski show for a weekend. I had great legs in those days, I must say. I had this huge, ugly, seven-foot costume on, but my legs were just in red tights, and all day long, gentlemen would come up to me and say, "Darling, can I be around when you take that rooster costume off?"

[on winning a Tony and an Oscar within a year of each other] That blew me away. I didn't see it coming! You think, "Well, I'm made in the shade for life." You go through this period of assuming the fountain will never cease giving forth and the roles will never cease coming. So you buy your own hype for a little bit, and you have to be cut down to size again. Oh, the cycles of life! But yes, that was a wonderful time.

[on The Fisher King (1991)] The screenplay was witty, more or less perfect - one of the few I ever worked on that didn't have to be re-tooled or re-doctored. It was written by Richard LaGravenese and of all the writers I've worked with before or since in film - any kind of film, television film, feature film - he writes for women; he writes for women with a knowing instinct, the way Tennessee Williams wrote for women with a knowing instinct, and so it was my role in that film and how he wrote it and how sympathetic he was for it and because there was a great deal of Richard actually in that role, that I think on an unconscious level it just kind of powered through.

[accepting her Golden Globe for The Fisher King (1991)] When I was a kid in New York City studying acting, it was a fairly easy thing to be a sort of bright-eyed true believer in lofty things like art for art's sake, but that sort of - if you're lucky enough to make some money at this business - makes way for exactly that: the business aspect of it. And while I'm not encouraging any potential employers in this room to underpay me to return me to that original state of idealism, I would like to say that it's sweet - as sweet as it is rare - to be in a project that quite naturally returns that to you for a while, and that was what Fisher King was to me.

[1991, on working with Jeff Bridges on The Fisher King (1991)] There are waters that run very deep in him. On the set when we were working, he showed the ultimate respect of one actor for another. He saw you, heard you and was totally responsive through every take.

[1991, on working with Robin Williams on The Fisher King (1991)] His is a different rhythm altogether, much more improvisory, but he has that quality of seeing and listening too, a free-wheeling pas de deux. When he is acting and not doing stand-up, you see the pentimento of the Juilliard student who did Shakespeare and you see a technique and discipline exclusively an actor's.

It becomes something that's terrific when you're identified as an Oscar and Tony winner. That sounds good, but you realize it doesn't assure a lifetime's work in film. As a matter of fact, the day after I won the Academy Award, I got a telegram from Terry Gilliam saying, "Well, you won Best Supporting Actress. You know what that means: You'll never work again." And I thought, "Well, that's kind of mean." But he could be that way. He just meant it to be a joke. But that was the curse of Best Supporting Actor or Actress. And by god, it's hard to get a job after that. People think you want more money

When I was very young, I found myself with producers and directors whose behavior was unacceptable. Let's put it that way. But never with the Harveys of the world that much. But there was this feeling like, after you're 30, but certainly after you're 40, Hollywood really has no need for you, thank you very much.

[on Heartburn (1986)] I got a call to meet with the producer and Mike Nichols at his office apartment in the Carlyle Hotel, so I went and I was very nervous, of course. Mike Nichols, I mean, there are a million ways to describe him, but one way is just a true mensch. He put me right at my ease, and I read a number of small roles in the audition. He was nice enough to say, "Well, you're good at every one. Choose which one you want." At one point I said, "Well, how about I do them all in different wigs?" He loved that. He said, "It's not that kind of movie, but I admire your chutzpah." I just remember that being a hell of a lot of fun.

[on Lost in Yonkers (1993)] The play was much more sure-footed than the movie for a number of reasons. People said often, and it was true, that Neil Simon's plays by and large did not translate to the screen. "The Odd Couple"? "Barefoot in the Park"? Yeah. But the later plays, no. Martha Coolidge, wonderful director, but this classic New York story was not her bailiwick. It was a life-changer for me to do that role on Broadway. I felt a little badly that the film didn't do as well, but I kind of suspected when I read the script.

[on working with Arnold Schwarzenegger on Last Action Hero (1993)] He was nice for a Republican. He said, "Come wiz me to ze gym." I thought he was joking, but he had this area sealed off on the soundstage, and it really is as big as a gymnasium. He has like 30 work machines. And I walk in there and it looks like a room from the Spanish Inquisition. And he says, "Pull up a machine." I said no, and he said, "Oh, come on, pull a few weights. It's good for you." I'm sure he was right, but I was terrified of those machines. He has biceps that look like small hills. And you want to say, "Do you take those off at night to sleep?" He has a sense of humor. He's a kind man, not patronizing.

[on Frasier (1993)] It's the wittiest highbrow show on television. All the actors have stage training, so we speak the same language.

[1995 interview, on her career post-Oscar] It wasn't that nothing happened, but scripts of the substance that I was looking for didn't materialise, but that's hard at any point if you're not 25. Even if you're 25 - great scripts for women are not plentiful. That'll change - I mean, look at the way it was in the '30s and '40s - the incredible roles for women. But right now, politically, culturally, in the battle between the sexes, something is happening which is being manifested in the film world, at least at that high level of the big studios and you just don't see very many great roles for women. So there's that. I did two films that were not enormous box-office successes - Lost in Yonkers (1993) and Last Action Hero (1993).