It's well known by now that I had a special need to get Maureen's goat when ever the opportunity presented itself. I was a boy and she was the enemy... a girl.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There was definitely a moment, a time after 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle', when I did get offered a lot of women in jeopardy-type roles. But I couldn't do it, physically, I just couldn't. But now I know what I know, I wonder if I should have played the whole fame game a little more.
'Beauty Queen' is the weirdest, strangest, and most perfect play to do before 'Hedda Gabler', because there are so many similar issues for Maureen and Hedda. I had played leading ladies before but couldn't really hook into them. After 'An American Daughter' and 'Beauty Queen', I had all the ballast.
I had met a young lady who wanted to be in the theater. It was Judy Holliday. She had somehow fallen down the steps of the Village Vanguard, which still exists today.
Kellie Overbey gave me this play called 'Girl Talk.' I read it and totally fell in love with the characters. I told her she had to let me direct it and put Marcia DeBonis in it.
As a little girl growing up in a small farming town in Michigan, my idols were women like Marlene Dietrich and Rita Hayworth.
Sometimes there has to be a goat on some level, and I'm totally fine with that being me.
I had to pinch myself a couple of times that I was actually on stage at the Atlantic with Carol Kane.
I was the understudy to the understudy in a year-two production of 'Big Chief Red Feather.' The boy who had the lead broke his arm, and then the understudy got chicken pox. And I loved it. I got to wear the most feathers in my headdress.
There was a period of time when I thought I had to be Alice Cooper all the time.
I was pretty taken with Patti Smith, she was my heroine.