Twice I had been stopped by these jobs, and I thought the role on Dark Shadows would go on for about three or four weeks. And then, the phenomenon began, the role caught on, the mail started to flood in.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My job on 'Dark Shadows' was to make it fun and funny, first and foremost. It can still be dark and it can still even be gory and gothic at times, but it also needed to be fun and it needed to be an experience that people would enjoy having.
Over a spell of about three years, I played a series of roles that were, for me, all very different, but most of them came out within a six-month period. They all dealt with a kind of dark territory that in some cases had been mined before in movies.
I wrote for nearly six hours. When I stopped, the dark mood, as if by magic, had folded its cloak and gone away.
I had a soap opera, and my next job was working with Kyle McLachlan on The Invisible Man.
I've been working some really long hours for the last five or six years. Anybody who works on series television knows, and especially women because women spend probably two hours more than the guys with all their hair and makeup crap.
I left my mark on 'Dark Shadows.' One day I was doing my lines perfectly from Act 3. Everyone else was doing Act 2.
I've been working almost 20 years, and I think I've worked with maybe one black director of photography in that time. Maybe two women directors or DPs. Maybe. And I've done a lot of TV. That's a lot of people I've worked with.
It really is a day job, and it also seems to have virtually disappeared-with no remorse, really. It gives me more time to paint.
One of the reasons I think Dark Shadows still runs is that it's dependent on nothing else other than a story.
I'll often rush out from Dark Shadows, having made a 5.30PM appointment, working for a couple of hours.