When I started in the theater, I'd do plays by Shakespeare or Ibsen or Chekhov, and they all created great women's roles.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
What I really want to do is create great roles for women. And I'm not talking Nicholas Sparks romance. I think women's roles have gotten ghettoized in these sort of places... I'm thinking women in action, comic books, or like the Tony Soprano of women. We need some complex roles.
My whole drive to be an actor was finding roles that I really believed represent modern women, the struggles that we deal with. Women who are strong and capable and in control of their own lives.
I thought I would spent my career doing Chekhov and Ibsen in regional theaters, so the fact that I started doing new plays was a whole new world I didn't expect, and that I would like to keep doing.
When women get great roles in life, they start to get great roles in films and TV. Look at Janet Reno, Madeleine Albright, and Mrs. Thatcher. Because those images are coming at us in life, they are reflected in acting.
There are some great women's roles in television... so much more interesting than what I was reading in film scripts.
I played Hamlet, I played Chekhov and Ibsen and all the classics.
I'm always keeping an eye out for a period piece. I was trained in theatre, so most of the things we did were classical - Shakespeare, Moliere, and Chekhov.
For most of my career, I've played roles that were written for other actresses.
I'd quite like to do a film but I'd also love to do more theatre. I want to keep challenging myself with good roles. It's harder for women because there aren't as many challenging roles.
If you're a woman doing classic theater, the big roles are often destroyers. I've played Hedda Gabler, Lady Macbeth, some of the Chekhovian heroines, Electra, Phaedra - they're all powerful women, but they're forces of negativity.