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Tennessee Williams is an incredible writer for women because, in many ways, his women characters are him. He writes so passionately.

I've always had an affinity for writers who have a poetry background, so I always liked Tennessee Williams.

I was a lusty kid who loved Tennessee Williams.

To Tennessee Williams we owe a special debt. In a tragic age, he has transformed loneliness by naming it for us, suffered sordidness with beauty, graced poor hurt lives with love and pity.

The stronger the participation of the female characters, the better the movie. They knew that in the old days, when women stars were equally as important as men.

Mary Tyler Moore was a working woman whose story lines were not always about dating and men. They were about work friendships and relationships, which is what I feel my adult life has mostly been about.

I grew up when one of America's greatest black playwrights, August Wilson, was writing about life in Pittsburgh, but I never saw myself in any of his straight-male plays. And then I see 'Angels,' which was so honest and painful, and it had this black drag queen in it, Belize, with a big heart. I finally had a character to relate to.

I'm very fond of Tennessee Williams' plays, and when my husband and I went to New Orleans in the late 1970s, we saw 'A Street Car Named Desire.'

The story of Willie Stark fascinated me because it was tackling the story of a man who outwardly has all the success one could possibly want and who is destroyed by his personal demons.

And, I'd never done Tennessee Williams, and I had done Broadway musicals, so it was a challenge.