A Very Candid Conversation With Sally Kirkland

I’ve prefaced this interview with this quote from Sally Kirkland because it not only describes Sally in a nutshell but also provides the theme on which I center  throughout this interview. Although Sally is the first Oscar-nominee to grace my blog, she is also the most unconventional of my subjects. Sally started out studying acting at the prestigious Actors Studio, while in addition she acted in Andy Warhol films. She would be the first actress to be nude on off-Broadway. In addition, she would also take supporting roles in mainstream films as The Sting and The Way We Were and taught yoga and acting as well. One of the most famous of her acting students is Sandra Bullock.

Sally first came to the attention of many people when she won the Golden Globe for Anna as a once-famous Czech star exiled from her home country who could do no better than be a stand-in for a terrible off-Broadway play. She would also receive an Oscar nomination – the award for which would go to Cher– for Anna in 1987. Afterwards, Sally got more leading roles, one of which is Cold Feet. The cover of that film featured Sally in a skin-tight dress. As a teenager, I stared at that cover a lot. I was startled for two reasons. First, she was not meant to be attractive in Anna and yet she is very attractive in the photo. Second, up to that point I had been attracted to girls either my age or not much older than their early 20s. Sally was in her 40s when she shot the photo and was the first to show me that mature women can be as sexy as younger women. In addition, she could deliver one-liners with incredible humor. For instance in Cold Feet, the night before she marries Keith Carradine, she jumps on him and says, “Oh boy, premarital sex!” She would continue dressing up some in skin-tight outfits and with her wacky humor in other films such as In the Heat of Passion, Forever and Double Threat. These days, Katy Perry, combines sexuality and humor, but where Katy is in her ripe 20s, Sally was doing this in her 40s. Sally did follow up Anna with some serious roles in Revenge and JFK. Nevertheless, roles like In the Heat of Passion was a very unusual choice for any Oscar-nominated actress to do and made Sally very unique. A song by The Original Sins called “Sally Kirkland” describes Sally at this time very accurately. You can listen to it here.

Sally did start doing mother roles in EdTV and has continued to act in a lot of independent films and shorts. Some of these are serious roles. However, her adventurous side has not left her. She still does nudity and most recently did a play based on the porn film Deep Throat. She also continues to teach acting. In addition, she is a minister as well. In this candid conversation, I try to cover as many sides of Sally as I can, whether its nudity, her Oscar-nominated performance in Anna, her acting coaching or her being a minister. I want to thank Sally for taking the time out to do this interview. In addition, I want to thank the Jeff Cramer who happens to be Bob Dylan’s manager. You see, Sally friended me on Facebook, thinking I was Bob Dylan’s manager. Obviously, I am not, but if it wasn’t for the Jeff that is Bob Dylan’s manager, I wouldn’t be doing this interview. Finally, Sally is a very original person with many sides to her. I suggest you watch this six minute clip here to get an idea of what you are about to get into when you read this interview.

Jeff Cramer: How did you get into acting?

Sally Kirkland: My mother was the assistant editor of Vogue for many years and then she was fashion editor of Vogue I think from ’47, ’48 and she was the first person to put multiple models on one page. She was also the first person to bring Italian fashions to this country post-war. So I was brought up as a child being photographed by Irving Penn for Vogue and eventually Richard Avedon as well. So I had this whole socialite modeling career with my mother not because I really wanted to, because I was painfully shy, but she just kept putting me in these situations where I was in front of the camera.

So I would say that there was no escaping me and the camera even at the age of five. I started painting when I was ten. I actually went to the Valley Drama Camp when I was ten and did little bits of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream and very lofty Shakespeare. I was the president of the drama club when I was in prep school. I always played men because I was a 5’9” woman. So that helped me because playing men for years and years and years you develop a tremendous projection on stage. That allowed me to be probably a better actress than I would have had I not had seven years of playing men first.

JC:Yes. From the drama school, you went into the Actor’s Studio.

SK:Right. So I graduated from high school and right away I went to Spoleto, Italy where I got to be Zeffirelli’s private assistant. So I would sit there all day every day watching these young – he was very adamant about hiring young people instead of big, old fat people, actors, stars – young people doing La Traviata and the tears would stream down my face. So my first hit on acting was the way they did it in opera, which was very bigger than life. So Herman Shumlin, a big Broadway producer then said, “Where did you learn how to do all these emotions?” I said, “From Italy.”

I think I was very lucky to get the best training in the world with, like I said, Paul Curtis for mime, and then Uta Hagen and Lee Strasberg, and ultimately Shelley Winters, who I lived with a lot. So a lot of young people nowadays haven’t had the opportunity to be with those brilliant, brilliant people.

I then went to Lee Strasberg where I became the youngest actor at the Actor’s Studio and got to hang out with Paul Newman and John Woodward and I got to act with Rip Torn. I did Richard III. Then I had met Bobby De Niro and we dated a little bit and I brought him to the Actor’s Studio, brought him to Shelley Winters who got him a working observership at the studio. Pacino was in class and Dustin was in class.

I mean the women were myself, Brenda Vaccaro, Jill Clayburgh, the men were De Niro, Pacino, Dustin. The older generation was Paul Newman and Joanne, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn. It was an amazing time to be a member of the Actor’s Studio. So I did a lot of plays off-Broadway. I can’t remember all the names and I became the lead actress in the La Mama Troupe, directed by Tom O'Horgan. I did many, many, many plays.

JC: As you were doing this training, you were also with Andy Warhol. A lot of Andy Warhol people, they didn’t really go to acting studios and study technique.

SK: When Andy said, “Will you let me interview you and photograph you,” I said, “Well, I don’t want to be associated with the underground actors because I’ve been studying with Lee Strasberg for years, and I’m an off-Broadway actress.” And so he said, “Oh, I understand,” and he took away his camera. Now little did I know that Andy was going to become Andy. You know? So I obviously should have let him interview me and all of that, but I was a snob. You know, I thought Baby Jane Holzer was a married wife to a millionaire, and Viva never acted before, and Edie Sedgwick never acted. They weren’t trained, and so I was a real snob about it.

JC:But you did do it with Andy Warhol. It was your first movie.

SK: I did three, but the other director who was trained by Andy, his name is Piero Heliczer, I did two with him, and then I did 13 Most Beautiful Women.

But back in the day we were doing off-off-Broadway and off-Broadway and I became the first nude actress…

JC: How did a shy woman suddenly become the first nude actress?

SK: No, I stopped being shy sometime in the early ’60s,with what’s called “the private moments” at the Actors Studio where I do my imitation of Marilyn Monroe on the calendar. I would find some way to take my clothes off in a private moment, and with Lee Strasberg’s support. Pretty soon, everybody in the Actors Studio was waiting for me to take my clothes off.

I was obsessed with Marilyn Monroe and also at 18 I had met Shelley Winters who took me under her wing, adopted me. She had lived with Marilyn. So she gave me Marilyn’s shoes that were open toe, open back and they were called Fuck Me Shoes according to Shelley. Marilyn’s Fuck Me Shoes. I wore them everywhere. I wore them absolutely everywhere and that gave me the power of being Marilyn Monroe. It also gave me the power to take off all my clothes.

So people were amazed at this “free-spirit”. Little did they know that my mother, the fashion editor, never wore a bra. She created the no-bra look. So I did a play called Sweet Eros by Terrence McNally in 1968 and that became the very first nudity in theater in America. It opened before Hair. It opened before Oh Calcutta. There were policemen lined up in the back of the theater and it was quite something in its time.

JC: In Sweet Eros, I understand you were tied to a chair and not saying anything for 45 minutes.

SK: And having a nervous breakdown, yeah. I was having a nervous breakdown, and then I fell in love with my captor and all of that, so there was a lot of emotion with tears and my face. I had some mime training with Paul Curtis, which helped.

JC: Alright. And even the next one, Futz, you were on a pig, and that’s gonna get anyone’s attention.

Sally on the pig in Futz

SK: Right, I was on the cover of Screw Magazine. That pig weighed 500 pounds. It was freezing. It was ten below zero, and there I am nude.

JC:Curious what it’s like sitting on a pig as a horse?

SK: I almost fell off, and thank goodness there was a stuntman standing by. So when the pig started – the sow was running, I did fall off into the arms of the stuntman. But just give me a challenge, and I’ll take it. You know, it’s really all back to Marilyn Monroe.

JC: But Sally, Marilyn Monroe didn’t really sit on a pig from what I remember.

SK: But she was, you know, she was in her own world, and I guess I’ve always been in my own world when I get into what I call "the zone" with acting, and I surprise myself at what comes out. I learn my lines. I basically listen to the director, and then I just go to the zone. This was back in 1968. Every cab driver in New York knew me because no one else was doing it. It was fun. My mother understood it. My father was furious and my grandparents, Philadelphia mainline, all that. I was a debutant. They could not understand how I could ruin my life.

Then I followed that up with a film that was X rated called Coming Apart [To see the trailer for Coming Apart, click here.] with Rip Torn and myself which there was a whole thing about, “Is it pornography or is it art?” Roger Ebert and Vincent Canby championed it and so ended up being art. But it was about as sexual as you can get and nude as you can get. So I have to laugh when I see people think that Madonna and these people invented all this because we were doing it in what was called the Sexual Revolution in the Arts in the ’60s. When the New York Times called me out and said, “Why, why, why are you taking off your clothes all the time?” – in one play I had a bodysuit with a penis and hair and Fredric Forrest had bosoms. So it was interesting dynamics. I mean crazy things we were doing with the La Mama Troupe. But I said to the New York Times, I said, “Look, you can’t carry a gun on a naked body. I’m opposed to the war in Vietnam.” That was very real. So it was all about tearing down the establishment. My mother was the establishment. She was telling people to put clothes on. I was telling them to take them off.

Sally with Rip Torn behind her in Coming Apart

JC: But also even in Coming Apart, I remember the ending of you destroying the camera at the end, doing it completely nude at the end.

SK: According to all the film magazines, that was a stationary camera obviously. It was an object.

JC: You found it and you were destroying it.

SK: Yeah, I was throwing stones at the mirror and the mirror was – the camera.

Then once I did Coming Apart right after that I got The Way We Were and The Sting. Actually Bob Redford got me the part in The Sting because George Roy Hill wanted a really busty Valerie Perrine type and he wanted to go to Vegas with Robert and find a woman. Bob, he knew me because we did The Way We Were together and we had double dated once. He said, “I really think that Sally Kirkland will be great.” So I got hired to do The Way We Were and The Sting, but where was it? I was with a yogi in the Smokey Mountains having “quit acting.”

My agent called me up or I called my agent, “Where are you?” I said, “I’m in the Smokey Mountains. I’m getting God realized. I don’t want to act.” He said, “You’ve got to do this. I’ve waited ten years for you to have a break like this. You’re quitting on me.” I said, “You don’t understand it. I’m peaceful for the first time in my life. I don’t want to go back to ego shit.” So I said, “I’ll do these two roles for you and then that’s it.”

JC:But these were two movies that were big.

SK: Well nobody knew at that time they were going to be that big.

JC: But they became big, yes.

SK: Right. So I came to California. I did one scene of The Way We Were in New York and then the other scene was in L.A. and The Sting was in L.A., Universal. I didn’t have any money. They paid me $700.00 for each. I ended up house-sitting for all sorts of different people. At one point I was living in a millionaire’s house and I had him persuaded that I was a Swedish house maid. He knew nothing about my off-Broadway career and I would be dressed as a yogi because I was a yoga teacher at that point. I had met Swami Satchidinanda in ’69 and by the time I got to L.A. I was teaching full time at the Integral Yoga Institute.

The guy whose mansion I was in, Steve Powers, he would invite all these Playboy Bunnies over and there I would be in my white pajamas. He’d say, “Sally will teach you yoga.” I’d be teaching the Playboy Bunnies yoga and taking care of his house and occasionally cooking. Then one day he went to play tennis with Kirk Kerkorian and I think he led me to believe he was leaving town for a few days.

Sally ready to practice yoga

I all the time had Bobby De Niro and Roger Corman playing tennis on the tennis courts when I had the house to myself. This one day that I thought he was out of town Baba Ji showed up, the guru who with all these yogis who looked like they hadn’t taken a shower in three weeks. I said, “Oh don’t worry about a thing. The house is yours.” So they were running all over the house, having their first shower and bath. Steve Powers came home, absolutely furious. Fired me on the spot. I was crying and all my friends get back on the bus and they leave and say, “Don’t worry Sally.”

Then the man who introduced me to Steve Powers who was then my manager said, “Do you know who you just fired?” He said, “The maid or the housekeeper.” My manager said, “Well she was considered the Helen Hayes of off-Broadway for ten years and she was in The Sting and The Way We Were but she probably didn’t mention any of that to you because she wanted your money. She wanted you to support her.” So it was a pretty funny period of my life where I just kept going from house to house. Susan Tyrrell took me in. She took me in in New York too when I had my nervous breakdown and she just passed over like six months ago.

But Susan Tyrell took me in. We lived in Laurel Canyon. David Carradine was up the street. We painted together. I did A Star Is Born and Private Benjamin. Then I did a whole bunch of Aaron Spelling television, things like Beretta, Starsky & Hutch, Charlie’s Angels, Lou Grant.

Sally hanging out with DeNiro and Dylan

JC: Actually, your role in Private Benjamin was significant between that period of Coming Apart and Anna.

SK: Yes, I played a lesbian.

JC:Right, but even more so, you were in the military, even though now we’ve come away from Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

SK: Good for you, Jeff, that’s a really perceptive thing to say. No one has ever said that to me. Until you just said it now, I didn’t even think of it. I remember that no one wanted to play that part in New York. They had a hard time casting it. I didn’t even think about the military aspect. I just remember that the buzz was that nobody wanted to play a lesbian at that time, and I couldn’t figure out why they would ever not want to play anything. A good actor will do anything, almost anything.

I also played a lesbian in The Nanny with Fran Drescher, and I in theory had a 15-year relationship with a woman. CBS cut out all the lines. That was before Ellen came out. So I have over the years, I did a short that won a lot of awards called Audit. Judy Greer and I had a kissing scene in the bathroom.

JC: Oh, Judy Greer, most recently from The Descendents. She’s a great actress.

SK:Yeah. So I was like an older woman coming on with this young girl in the bathroom. It was pretty outrageous.

JC: Before we get to Anna, I want to discuss that you have been an acting teacher. How did you become an acting teacher?

SK: My spiritual teacher, John Roger. I was in debt at the time and had been out of work for almost a year, and he said, “Isn’t there anything else you can do besides act?” And I said, “Well, I could probably teach that and yoga, and I could sell my paintings. And I could –” There was a fourth thing. Can’t remember what it is now. He said, “Okay, I challenge you to do it,” and right away, I started doing it all. Or chose teaching acting, teaching yoga for money. So important, so important that when you’re a young actor that you go to the opera and the ballet and the museums, and you see great art so that the artist in you is never without an opportunity to do a different art form.

Love teaching. Love teaching acting, and what I did for many years at the Strasberg Institute, I taught film acting, so there would always be a camera, and they would learn right away by seeing themselves on tape of what they were doing wrong, what they were doing right. They would show up with their tape and leave with their tape. I did that for many years. I did it in 15 cities in this country, Australia, England, France, and Hawaii. The ’80s. The ’80s were when I traveled a lot teaching. Then when I got Anna, everything changed. I acted pretty nonstop until 1993, I think.

JC: I understand one of your famous students is Sandra Bullock.

SK: Sandy was like 22, 23 when I taught her. Sandy listened to a lot of what I said. I picked out her photographs, resume, I got her an agent, did a showcase where she was picked up for her first or maybe second – I think it was her first movie. But it’s been quite a life of putting the magic wand on people’s heads and having them do great.

Other people I taught in class or coached over the years include Barbara Streisand for Yentl, Liza Minnelli for a trilogy on TV and for her act in Vegas, Billy Paxton. Oh God, there’s a lot of them. Amy Madigan, Rebecca De Mornay. So a lot of people that some – they either ended up at the Strasberg Institute when I was there or they ended up in my class in New York or in Barbara’s case I went to her house and Liza’s case I went to her house.

JC: You mention John Roger, your spiritual teacher, encouraging you to start teach acting. He also encouraged you to be a minister.

SK:I’m what’s called a minister of light, and that means I don’t wear a clerical collar and go to a building every Sunday and preach. I do do an amazing amount of service in the world, and I give seminars, and I’ve married many people and buried them (I think I did the eulogy for Raul Julia) done baby blessings, and all of that. Yeah, since 1975. If it wasn’t for my spiritual path, there’s no way I’d be acting 53 years.

There’s a whole period particularly in the ’80s when I was an AIDS caretaker, cancer caretaker, heart, and my uncle had a stroke and for seven years couldn’t talk. So I believed that it’s that side of me that keeps me sane in Hollywood, because it’s just so narcissistic, Hollywood. You can get pulled into this very delusional world. If you’re on a spiritual path, I don’t care what spiritual path it is, it keeps you grounded to treat others the way you would want to be treated. Out of God comes all creation. No soul was lost. So I’ve been Reverend Sally Kirkland at the Church of the Movement of Spiritual Awareness since 1975. John Roger has been an extraordinary guide to me all these years. I take him to the Oscars every year.

I think it’s the death of anybody who reads your interview to think that they can just go be a star and not have other things they like to do. That can be writing, writing a screenplay, making your own movies. Get a little camera and make your own short, make your own. But waiting for the telephone to ring is death. Depending on agents can be death, too. You’ve got to keep creating yourself, reinventing yourself. I’ll never forget running into Harrison Ford, early in his career, in the cleaners down the street in West Hollywood. Then I said, “Oh my Bod, you’re the guy. You’re the guy from Star Wars.” He said, “Yes, but don’t let it fool you. I’m still a carpenter.” That always stuck with me that he kept doing his carpentry work no matter how rich and famous he got. I think that’s a lesson to all of us.

JC: Now let’s discuss Anna.

Sally as Anna

SK: I got hooked up with Joe Papp and doing a Czechoslovakian play written by Vaclav Havel called Largo Desolato. Then simultaneously my manager called me and said, “You think you can do a Polish accent?” Although I hadn’t been using an accent in the Czech play I was feeling very Eastern European. I said, “How many weeks do I have?” He said, “Two.” So I said, “Tell them yes.”

Then I went through the whole thing of finding tapes. I found out that the back elevator man of my mother’s building was Czech. I gave him a bottle of wine and had him read my lines. Then I copied his Czech accent. That was sort of the beginning of the Anna period. My whole life changed. Isn’t that funny how that happens when you get nominated? [Click here to watch a scene of Sally’s Oscar-nominated performance in Anna.]

JC:; I remember that you did all the campaigning for your Oscar nomination.

SK: Not entirely on my own but we didn’t have any budget. So I had a New York publicist named John Springer who had handled Marilyn, Elisabeth Taylor and Bette Davis and I had an L.A. publicist named Dale Olsen who just passed away three or four months ago. They knew their stuff. They said, “Go here; go there.” I went everywhere they told me but there was no real budget. So my campaign was almost all black and white ads. They were rarely full pages. They’d be half.

But I got so many great quotes from everyone from the critics to Norman Mailer. Rex Reed said, “Sally Kirkland devours Anna like raw steak and emerges a major star.” Amazing quotes. So initially when I decided that I was going to go for this Oscar thing I went to the SAG After Federal Credit Union and took our $7,000.00 and brought the back page of Weekly Friday and at that point I’d been to enough festivals where I had enough quotes. Variety called me brilliant and Seattle said, “The best performance in ten years.”

So I had this ad and I made it look like my manager took it out but it was really me and I think Vestron [the studio] might have given me their insignia. So that caused some commotion. Because of that ad Dale Olsen said, “I’ve always thought you were talented but I think you could really win the Oscar.” With him saying that after he got eight Oscars for Shirley MacLaine or something I thought, “Anything you say.”

I remember Rolling Stone did a 14-page story and I was supposed to be on the cover if I won, which at that time they thought I was going to because I had won the Golden Globe and the Independent Spirit Award and the L.A. Film Critics Award. So they had the cover but then Cher won. So I was on the French cover of Rolling Stone but the 14-page article, which I no longer have, was intact.

My story about the spirit of the campaign was that I was at the Golden Globes I think and I had the Golden Globe in my hand, or maybe it was the Oscars, and I was waiting for my limo and Gena Rowlands was standing next to me, who I worship, and she said, “I voted for you.” I said, “Wow, that’s amazing because my character is sort of a combination of you and Marlene Dietrich.” She said, “I’m embarrassed Sally but I didn’t see your film. I just saw your campaign and I’ve never seen anything like it. So I voted for you.”

A lot of that was going on, the actors for actors were holding up signs outside the Oscars. There were all these people with placards with signs, “The actors for Sally.” There was a party that Dale Olsen gave me and De Niro showed up and posed with me. Back then he wouldn’t pose with any woman at all. So it was a huge breakthrough to have him pose with me, endorse me. Shelley Winters, Lainie Kazan, all my friends.

The Actor’s Studio was out there sort of campaigning. I think that between Shelley and I we made 150 – you could not send out tapes then. That was the year before they allowed you to send out tapes. We made about 150 phone calls. I wrote letters to everybody I had heard was a member but I couldn’t show them the film unless they saw it. So a lot of people they wanted the underdog to win because everyone else had a lot of money in their campaigns.

Nowadays that probably couldn’t happen anymore because now you can send out tapes and everyone spends millions on the campaigns. But that was 1987, ’88. So I hope this doesn’t sound egotistical but I was very blessed to have a huge support team who loved the film Anna.

JC: The other thing I have to remember, it’s been talked about, people mention it, you really thought you would win that award because your mouth opened wide when it didn’t happen.

SK: Really? Really? You mean in other words, I had a disappointed look?

JC:Someone asked you about that in an interview. Your words were that, “I’m not a good liar.”

SK: I think what I meant by that was I was heartbroken. If I had won the Oscar, I probably would have had some pretty damn good scripts offered to me. I thought I was going to win. It was because my publicist convinced me of that. You know, they do those things in Las Vegas for people, and it came out that I was either going to win or tie with Glenn Close, but it didn’t happen. I think in the next years, you will definitely see me winning a supporting Oscar. I mean I don’t plan to stop. When I was 18 years old, I was told by an astrologer that I wouldn’t do what I came on the planet to do until I was much, much older.

So that’s the way I see myself, as somebody who’s growing all the time, growing.

JC: That’s the other thing. There was always this talk as – I haven’t seen it lately but I remember each Oscar you would come in with some sort of outrageous outfit.

SK: Yeah. That was when I had my tits, excuse the expression and I just had to show them off. I was so in love with Marilyn that I had to – if they weren’t going to put me in movies like that I had to show up and look like that. It was my little fantasy that I was living out. Then once I got the surgery to have them taken out I wasn’t so attached to going and being Ms. Red Carpet. I’ll do it occasionally but I’m at my Katharine Hepburn period where I wear sneakers and stretch pants and that’s it. I’m really at a different phase in my life since the whole getting dressed up thing. But I’m still very blonde and my legs are still good. I think I’ve got a good body. I wish I worked out more but that will come in its time.

Sally in a red dress riding to the Oscars

JC: You charted a much different path after Anna. In your next film, High Stakes, you played a prostitute and stripper.

SK: Well, I just – I get bored easily by actors who play themselves, and I think a really great actor is a character actor and likes to surprise him or herself every time at bat. And so hopefully, I’m different every character I play. I think it’s too bad that they’ve made such a thing out of actors being celebrities. A lot of young actors nowadays in Hollywood are made famous so quickly that they sort of get stuck being themselves a lot without doing theater training and playing around with all different characters. Another reason is my Scorpio sign, which is intense to the extreme, and the other is my Gemini rising sign because you know – well, Marilyn was a Gemini. Bob Dylan is a Gemini, I like to identify with them.

So when I heard I was going to play a stripper in a film called High Stakes I had these implants put in, and that ended up being a tragedy because I almost died from them.

JC: Having been the first actress to do nudity on stage, you were already very comfortable with your body. Why did you feel you had to get implants?

SK: I was losing a lot of roles. Busty women. Hollywood was very different than New York. So had I not been rejected so many times because of that, I probably wouldn’t have done it. Back when I did it in ’86, really was no proof at that point that you could get hurt by it

You know, my favorite picture in terms of eroticism comes from High Stakes, the still from that that classic picture of me dancing with the pole with the stripper outfit. it’s my busts were pretty nude. I just had tiny little things holding them up.

Sally’s favorite picture

>JC: Now we come to Cold Feet. That was the picture that got me to pay attention to you. I stared at the poster of you in that skin-tight dress for a long time.

SK: That’s Annie Leibovitz who shot that poster. [To see the trailer for Cold Feet, click here.]

JC: Right. Well, it was that Annie Leibovitz photo, I will confess, I stared at many times.

SK: Oh, great.

JC: That’s what encouraged me to look at it. And occasionally, I would look back at Anna and go, “Wait, is that the same woman?”

The Cold Feet photo I loved

SK: Well you see I always wanted to be Marilyn. I told you that story. As for Cold Feet I believe, I loved Tom Waits so much. I was friends with Bob Dylan and he’d introduced me to Tom Waits at the Troubadour. At the time Tom was living in his car down the road from the Troubadour, in the ’70s. So I was told that he was fine and I wanted to act with him. Then Keith Carradine came on board and then Jeff Bridges, that he’d do a cameo and then Rip Torn came on board. It was really an amazing experience and we were all in Montana and Arizona and whatnot. I wanted to show people that I was funny because Anna was so dramatic. But Cold Feet was fun and then I did a film called Best of the Best with Eric Roberts and James Earl Jones. So many people to this day say, “Coach Wade.”

JC: Right. I’ve seen the movie. Yes.

SK:For that that was intriguing, I was a martial arts coach but I didn’t know how to cut a brick. Of course I had to learn a little bit of tai-kwon-do and make it look real. But I was a yoga teacher so I could come close. My audition consisted of standing on my head and doing a backbend I think because they had already seen my movies.

JC: Right after that, you went on to Revenge.

SK: That’s true. Then I did Revenge with Kevin Costner and I showed up and Tony Scott was at the office. I was supposed to be there at 2:00 and I was in my car learning all the lines. So I showed up at five minutes after 2:00 and he said, “Oh Sally, Kevin just left.” I didn’t even know Kevin was going to be there. I said, “You’re kidding me.” He looks at me like, “You may have blown it. It’s between you and Faye Dunaway.”

So he calls up Kevin and he says, “Sally’s here now.” Kevin says, “Ask her if she can be there at 2:00 tomorrow.” So I go back and I don’t realize I know Kevin. I’m going on and on about, “Oh my God, Bull Durham.” I’m going through all five films he’d done that year. “I love this moment. I love that moment. I love Field of Dreams. I love when you did this.”

Finally he says, “Sally, don’t you know who I am?” I said, “What do you mean? You’re Kevin Costner.” “Don’t you remember I was the stage manager when Neil Young directed you and Dennis Hopper in Human Highway?” Well of course I didn’t remember. That was back in the ’70s and who was to know that Kevin Costner was the stage manager. So he definitely pulled for me to get that. I had a blast with them in Mexico.

JC: That was one of the late Tony Scott’s rare non-commercial pictures.

SK: Yeah. I mean a lot of people really loved the film Revenge and it is so dark and it is so edgy. I was just heartbroken when Tony killed himself. To work with him – first of all, he made me more beautiful than anyone’s ever made me physically I thought. He let me improvise a little and he – oh God, he sent me to the village with all this money that I was to get all of this sort of – I got my ears pierced five times over at all these sort of S & M bracelets and things and he really let me – I got that Tina Turner wig that I attached my own hair to. Tony also let me improvise. When I started talking in that same scene about I was from Oklahoma, and I was pronounced dead from drugs, it’s not in the script.

Sally in Revenge

JC: Well, I think in Revenge we get to see many sides of your acting talent. The beginning with you flirting with Kevin in the beginning, we get the funny sexy side of you, and then you know, when it becomes serious, once you realize he’s being serious and you’re about to be involved in something dramatic, we get the more serious side of you then. I think it’s one of the few roles – it’s the only role I can think of where we get to see both sides of you in the same role. You know?

SK: Did you see the scene where I tear up? I’m sitting right by his side, and he’s saying, “I’m not going to do this with you, and I’m not going to do this with you.” I said it with tears in my eyes because he’s frightened me. “For a second, I thought you were going to say you were gay.” That was the line.

JC: If I had to explain you briefly, I would point to that role if someone only had five to ten minutes, I’d say, “All right, we’ll just watch that scene. That kind of explains Sally Kirkland there.”

SK: That’s very perceptive. You’re very good.

JC: Thank you. You also worked with another director who recently passed away: Michael Winner. He directed you in Bullseye! with Michael Caine and Roger Moore.

SK: Winner, last week. Right. He was eccentric. He was about the most eccentric person I ever worked with. Michael Caine would come on the set when I was doing close ups because Michael Winner would scream at me so much, and he’d say, “Michael, darling, you don’t have to be here. We’re just doing Ms. Kirkland’s close up,” and he would say, “I’m here to protect Ms. Kirkland from you, Michael.” I can’t do my cockney right now, but he really did take care of me.

Michael Winner was somewhat of a misogynist. Great director, but very used to working with men. So he didn’t know how to treat women. So Michael Caine played my protector all through that film. He really did, from beginning to end of that experience. And Roger Moore’s daughter played my daughter in the film. I mean I never really knew a misogynist well until I met Michael Winner, but he was a misogynist. I couldn’t understand how his girlfriend took such abuse. Her name was Jenny Seagrove. She was a well-known British actor.

But then after Revenge and Bullseye! I think I did in and around that period I was hired to recur on Roseanne and I played Barbara Healy, Johnny Galecki’s mother. Hit in the face, kicked him out of the apartment, et cetera. I’m also very proud of the TV movie I did, The Haunted, a true story which got me a Golden Globe nomination for best actress in a movie for television. I did a lot of research. I went to Pennsylvania where the haunted house was, all the townspeople and really studied the woman who wrote the book. What I like about it is generally I don’t like horror films at all. I’ve turned 20 of them down, but I liked this story because it was a breaking down of her mind, a real character study.

My agency, William Morris was funny because they didn’t really want you to do television if you were making it in films but I wanted to do everything. They would say – like Howard Stern wanted me to be on – and they’d say, “No you can’t go on Howard Stern.” So I would go on Howard Stern. William Morris was kind of trying to keep me in line because I wasn’t acting like an Oscar nominee. You have to understand back then the big stars didn’t go on talk shows unless they very specifically had a contract with the studio to do so.

JC: The other thing William Morris probably wasn’t happy about was when you decided to do In the Heat of Passion.

Sally in In the Heat of Passion

SK: Yeah, if somebody was strategizing my career, they probably wouldn’t have let me do that. I love In the Heat of Passion. If people come down on me for it then they might look at their own issues.

Roger Corman asked me to do that and I’d grown up with Roger. He taught me – I was a casting director for him and [his wife] Julie back in the late ’60s, ’70s and then he had mentored me on producing. One reason why I ended up later getting EdTV was Ron Howard was so fascinated with my relationship with Roger because he’d had such a relationship with Roger.

In the Heat of Passion. I’m actually very proud of that film. A lot of people would have said, “She made a lot of wrong choices,” thinking that I should have continued to do Anna-type films and why was I doing this B film but I owed Roger Corman so much. I owed him a favor, and for those people that didn’t like it, fuck ’em. He mentored me from day one and I’m godmother to his oldest daughter. So it was a payback. Much later, I ended up doing a film with Jeremy Renner much later called Neo Ned. Jeremy Renner was discovered by Valerie McCaffrey. You could tell in two seconds he was going to be a major star but here he was working for free as a payback to Valerie who had discovered him. So sometimes you do that. You just say, “Okay, you helped me when no one would talk to me so I’m going to do a film for you.”

But with In the Heat of Passion, Roger paid me well and you know Roger doesn’t pay. So to get paid well by Roger was really something. I think I said something like, “I’ll trade you $40,000.00 of my salary if I can get somebody that I like rather than be assigned an actor.” Nick Corri, that was his name then and now he’s called Jsu Garcia he was a best friend of mine.

So it was easy to do all this erotic stuff because we would just laugh about it. Because I mean I was attracted to him but I was also best friends with him. So that would have been a harder film to do. Same thing with Coming Apart. Rip and I had dated. So I’m a strong believer in if you’re going to do an erotic film where you know the person you have to be erotic with and gracefully do it.

JC: Well, even if your friend and you laugh about the erotic scenes, a lot of viewers didn’t find it funny but erotic. When I was doing a Google search on you, believe it or not, on the first Google page a scene of In the Heat of Passion comes up. Comments on the YouTube page were saying like, “I can’t believe it, how sexy Sally is at . . .”

SK: I was probably about 45 or 46. Yeah. I was well into my 40s. I was trying to break down the rules. Look at Sophia Loren. Isn’t she like 77 or something? Why in Europe can you be a gorgeous, sexual woman? America you have to stop being sexual when you’re a certain age?

JC: Though at a certain age, you did start playing mother roles when you did EdTV.

SK: Now EdTV came from my current agent, not William Morris.

JC: Right, and you said that was to pay for your removal of the implants – EdTV.

SK: Yes, that’s true. I think Ron Howard was really shocked by that.

JC: I understand he tried to cast you – he originally wanted you in Parenthood for the Dianne Wiest role.

SK: Right, there were three of us considered for it, Dianne and I and a third woman, I can’t remember who. And he wanted me to read, and William Morris had told me, “You’re an Oscar nominee. You don’t have to read.” I knew in my gut that I should read, but I was very newly with William Morris, and I was trying to follow the instructions. The very next day, I was the first person he met with, and he told me how he used to watch me on Joe Franklin in New York. I couldn’t believe anybody saw me on Joe Franklin.

What he say is, “I can’t sleep, so I’m up in the middle of the night watching these shows.” He said, “I think you’re hysterically funny.” I go, “You mean you didn’t see Anna?” He said, “No, I just watch you on television, and that’s how I know you.” He said, “Please read for me.” Knew every line by heart, and I still said, “Well, I’ll have Anna messengered to you within an hour. If you still want me to read, I will.” He said, “Unfortunately, I’ve got to get on a plane and go to New York.”

Dumb Sally. By the time I actually was in a room with him ten years later, I said, “Look, I don’t want to make the same mistake twice. Last time, you asked me to read. I’ll do anything you want this time. How much time do I have?” He said, “Forty-five minutes,” and that’s when I knew I really was going to get this part.

Sally as mom in EdTVwhile son Matthew McConaughey looks on

JC: Yes. Well, what was interesting, your original husband and the guy who dies in bed with you were played by Dennis Hopper. You and Hopper both have careers that are both mainstream and cult.

SK: But that’s how you could definitely say that he played my husband in EdTV and he played opposite me when Neil Young directed us both in Human Highway with Devo and Dean Stockwell, et cetera. Dennis has been in my life a lot. I think Dennis is absolutely brilliant. It’s very perceptive of you to compare the two careers, and the only thing I didn’t do as much of as he did was direct. However, I directed ten years of theater. I only did this one thing on television. Roger Corman wanted me to direct his films.

But I identify with Dennis because he was a painter, I’m a painter. He loved doing far out things. 

But unlike Dennis, I never really did hard drugs. You know? And now that I’ve been a minister since ’75, we’re not allowed to, and I’ve never been a drinker because my parents died of alcoholism. So I’m pretty – for all of my craziness in the movies, I’m pretty straight laced, except I flirt like hell.

I think my least favorite thing in the world is to be bored and to be alone. I have a friend, Coty Galloway, who lives with me now, and it’s great. You know? But I can’t stand being alone. I have been for many years, but not by choice. I was married twice. You didn’t mention that.

JC: No, but I read that in a People Magazine article around the time you did Anna, where you talked about your two marriages and said, “It's hard to find a man who can handle my intensity.”

SK: Yeah. They wanted a simpler life. I’m a handful, as they say. But that’s not by choice. I would love to be married and happy and live with a soul mate for the rest of my life. I’m no different than most women. But this career thing, you know, has definitely driven me since I was ten.

JC: Right. What else did you do around the time of EdTV?

SK:EdTV was ’98. I did that same year Brave New World for NBC as Susan the mother who doesn’t make it to the Brave New World and my son does. I did Norma Jean, Jack and Me, played the festivals but did not get proper distribution I don’t think and it’s a shame because I played Marilyn had she lived to be in her 50s and it’s one of my best works. Jay Bernstein, who made stars out of Farrah Fawcett and Linda Evans and Suzanne Sommers, he said he liked it better than Anna but you can’t get a hold of it. It never came out on DVD. I have one copy. So that was that timeframe. I loved being the art professor on Felicity.

JC: Yes. I do remember seeing you on Felicity.

SK: I then did a play in Los Angeles. Because I played Matthew McConaughey’s mother on EdTV, because I taught Sandra Bullock and I kind of followed their love story and the two of them came and saw me do the play…

JC: Powder Room Suite. I saw it while I was living in LA.

Sally in Powder Room Suite

SK:I love you said you saw that play because it’s a little theater and it’s always amazing when someone’s taken the trouble to go to a little theater. The late Lana Clarkson, she and I shared the dressing room and we’d talk about men and God. In no way, shape or form did she kill herself. No way. So getting on stage again Thursday is the first time in a long time.

JC: What are you getting on stage for?

SK:; I’m now doing this star cameo with Bruce Vilanch in Deep Throat Sex Scandal and we open Thursday night. We’re just doing four performances, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

JC: I see you still aren’t shying away from sexual themes.

SK: I still do nude scenes. I did a nude scene in Archeology of a Woman which has been in three festivals – no, it’s won three awards already. I did a nude scene in a short. I do a lot of shorts now. They pay me. They pay me well. They’re terrific roles. Even Ron Howard is producing shorts.

But I just did a nude scene right before the hurricane on the east coast with Burt Young called Tom in America. I did a nude scene just recently. What was it? Posey? No. Now I can’t think. I think I’ve done at least three in the past two years. So even though my body isn’t as great as it used to be there’s something about me that likes to take it to the edge.

But yeah, I guess nudity has played a huge part in my life. Even now, I’m on a crazed crash diet right now in order to get into a dress that is very, very sexy for the play Thursday night. So I’m like water, coffee, and a hard-boiled egg is about it. And so I guess I’m vain, to a certain extent. I’ve always had a thing about wanting to be sexy and beautiful no matter what age. And if you saw the clips from Broken Roads [To see the trailer for Broken Roads, click here] and Archeology, I mean I have double chins, I have all this stuff that happens when you get older.

Sally in Broken Roads

But even in the clip in Archeology when I have no clothes on and I’m saying to the officer, “Would you zip me up,” and that’s supposed to be a 70-year-old woman. And this girl came up to me afterwards, and she said, “Can I hug you?” I said, “Sure,” and she said, “My God, what a role model. I hope I’m just like you when I’m your age.” And so there is something to be said for younger women thinking, “Oh, you mean I don’t have to turn off my sexuality when I’m past 50?”

I like to make people – I want women to really love their bodies no matter what, and I love men. So there’s that element of wanting to attract men. And then all the other stuff that goes with it. I’ve always been, for better or worse, a highly sexual person. But I had no regrets in life. I’ve been at gunpoint, knife point, almost strangled to death and I’m still here and I’ve had all these amazing experiences. 

A Very Candid Conversation with Rutanya Alda

Rutanya and myself, Chiller Theater Oct. 2013

When it comes to movies or TV, often, you hear about the leading actor. Occasionally, you might hear about a colorful supporting actor or two. But, very rarely do you hear about the other supporting actors who also make up the film or TV show. Their performances are essential in providing the movie with a believable background and environment. Rutanya Alda is that type of actress. She has had a long career acting in film, TV and theater. Her supporting roles have included mothers, prostitutes, housekeepers, judges and nurses. Her portrayals are very subtle in that you believe her as the character, and yet her performances never get in the way of the film and/or its star.

Two of the biggest supporting roles Rutanya has had were in the films, The Deer Hunter and Mommie Dearest. In The Deer Hunter, Rutanya is Angela, a pregnant bride who is marrying Steven (John Savage), who is about to be sent to Vietnam with Michael(Robert DeNiro) and Nick (Christopher Walken). Angela and Steven’s wedding takes up the first 50 minutes of the film and shows that Rutanya can hold her own among such fine actors as DeNiro, Walken and Meryl Streep. In Mommie Dearest, she is Carol Ann, Joan Crawford’s assistant/housekeeper. Carol Ann patiently endures the battle that goes on between Joan Crawford and her adopted daughter Christina. Rutanya's subtle and restrained performance is a good contrast to the more energetic and colorful performance that Faye Dunaway gives as Joan Crawford.

In her long career, she has worked with directors such as Michael Cimino, Sam Peckinpah, Brian DePalma, George Romero and William Lustig. In addition, she was acted with top actors such as Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken and Sean Penn. She has also worked with the contemporary leads of today like Jessica Chastain. In addition to describing supporting roles, in this interview she talks about the thrill of playing them and sometimes the disappointment of seeing the role being edited out of the film. Where many stories often focus on the leading actor of a project, Rutanya’s story is often an untold one about being a supporting actress and the often overlooked work of trying to make a small or supporting role work for the film or TV show.

In this candid conversation, we look back at the some of the main films she did, in films such  as The Deer Hunter and Mommie Dearest. We also look at her experiences working with some of the top directors and top actors as well as at what Rutanya is up to currently in her career. I really want thank Rutanya for taking the time out to do this interview.

Jeff Cramer: So how did you get started in the industry?

Rutanya Alda: I got started . . . well I came to New York to be an actress and study with the really great people that were teaching at the time that are all unfortunately passed on. I was like twenty years old. I'd graduated from college and I came to New York to study and to be an actress.

So I started out in … actually I did summer theater and stock in Cape Cod and a couple places in New Jersey. Then I got into doing films. I started out doing extra work on films. My first paid SAG job was when I was a student of Sandy Dennis' in Up the Down Staircase.

Then I did photo doubling for Mia Farrow for Rosemary's Baby. All the long shots are me. Then I did the early Brian DePalma films, which really gave me my first chance to really do substantial parts. They were Greetings and Hi Mom, with another young actor starting out at the time, Robert DeNiro.

Rutanya in Greetings

JC: Right. Those were DeNiro’s first films.

RA: Yeah. They're having a revival of both those films January 15th at the Film Forum in New York City. So if people in New York haven't had a chance to see them, they should because they're both really interesting films.

Brian DePalma in his early films made comedies, believe it or not. Greetings is a comedy and Hi, Mom, the sequel is a black comedy. So people don't realize that about Brian because he went into Hitchcock kinds of films, but he really had an amazing sense of humor and it comes through on both films.

JC: Now after doing DeNiro’s first film, you were also in Panic in Needle Park. This was one of Al Pacino's first films before he really became Al Pacino.

RA: Yes. I had a little part in that film in the beginning with Kitty Wynn. I'm the nurse that checks her into the hospital.

Then my late husband, Richard Bright, had a major part in that film. He played Al's brother who was kind of the thief and the drug addict. Course they were all drug addicts, but I think Panic in Needle Park is probably the best movie about drug addiction made and I think everybody in the movie is just wonderful. It’s by a wonderful director named Jerry Schatzberg. So I think every school should show that film because it deglamorizes drug addiction. Also it's a good story and the actors are wonderful.

JC: You also did with Jerry and Al a film that I have shown to my friends several times. It's again a very small role, Scarecrow.

RA: Yes. We went to Colorado to shoot that. Course all these things, there's always bigger parts and they always get cut down, like in that film my husband and I were hippies and we pick up Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, who are hitchhiking. But always you get cut out. There was more to that scene than that, but in the course of a film a director has to make a choice where it has to be trimmed and unfortunately that was trimmed, but it was a lot of fun and I loved working with Jerry and Al for the second movie.

I recently worked with Al on the HBO film You Don't Know Jack. So it's kind of nice to have that kind of thread through the years where you reconnect with people. Course my late husband worked with him in all three Godfathers.

JC: As Al Neri, yes. Speaking of cuts, there was one film where I saw you had a much larger part  – the original studio version of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

RA: Yes, in the original studio version I have a much bigger part. Not only does Pat Garrett hit me, slap me and get me to give him the information about where Billy the Kid is hiding, but there's this other kind of amazing, wonderful scene where all the hookers, including me because I play a hooker, are in bed with James Coburn.

Rutanya with James Coburn in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

JC: Right.

RA: I used to run into James Coburn a lot when he was alive at different restaurants in Los Angeles and he'd always say, “Weren't you in bed with me? Didn't you sleep?” Of course, the restaurant patrons not knowing would all be aghast, “Oh my God. Oh yes, it was wonderful being in bed with you, James.” We'd laugh because people didn't know what to make of it. But no, that was another one that was cut.

The thing about doing film, which is so … you kind of hold your breath because you never know what's gonna be left and what may be left out. That's the difference between doing stage and doing film because on stage you go on. The play, you know you're in control the moment the curtain goes up. You know what you're gonna be doing and you do it.

But in film you kind of hold your breath and you go … I did a movie directed by Paul Mazursky and starring George Segal called Blume in Love and I had a wonderful, funny scene in the film. The crew all loved it. They were laughing. They were saying, this is so funny. It's so great. Paul loved it.

Then Paul called me up personally, which I thought was a great thing for him to do because usually you don't hear until you see the movie whether you're in or out. Paul called me, “Rutayna, the scene was so wonderful and it was so funny, but it took away from the main story. It branched off and I had to cut the scene.”

So you just don't know. You film it and you keep your fingers crossed and you think, “Okay, I don't know if I'm in or out. Is part of it in, part of it out?” You don't know. So that's the thing about film.

JC: Getting back to Pat Garrett, I've heard a lot of stories about Sam Peckinpah, that he was quite a character.

RA: Yes, he was.

JC: I read in a Bob Dylan biography, which describes Bob Dylan's first appearance with Peckinpah, that Peckinpah had a gun and he was staring at himself in the mirror and then firing into it.

RA: Sam was very theatrical. He had a great sense of theater. He probably wanted to shock Bob Dylan somehow. I remember Bob Dylan on the set because I was down in Durango, Mexico where we shot it for eight weeks. Bob was, at that time, I don't know what he's like now, but he was very quiet and didn't reveal too much of himself. It was probably Sam's way of just shocking him so that he would respond in a different way.

Sam did that to people. He would provoke people or do things to get a reaction from them, but no, he wasn't a violent person. If he did that, he did that. I'm sure it was absolutely done with a reason and intention.

But Sam was also very material. He was a very emotional person and he wanted people that were very loyal to him and he wanted people to know that they were there for him and that they would do their best for him. He really wanted that artistic control of his vision of his film. He was very, very, very upset about when the studio did their own cut of the movie. I remember talking to him about it.

I liked Sam. I saw him in New York about two weeks before he died. He was doing this Julian Lennon video, which he wasn't too happy about doing, but he was in New York. He was staying at the Algonquin Hotel and we went out, but he couldn't wait to get back to L.A. because he had written a script that he wanted to do. Then two weeks later we heard he died of a heart attack. It’s really, really, really sad. Very upsetting.

JC: Now we get to one of your biggest films, The Deer Hunter. I re-watched the beginning of the film. Today I just cannot picture any movie starting off that way, that they would spend about 45 or 50 minutes on your wedding. Could you talk about the beginning of the whole wedding sequence?

RA: Well I think that the studio also tried to cut back the wedding scenes with me and it didn't work. I think they tried to cut it down because why the wedding … well it's about the rituals of life, the wedding, the war and the funeral, the three great rituals of life, but all the characters of the film are introduced in the wedding.

So if you don't have that wedding sequence, when they go to war you don't really care about them. So they're all introduced in the wedding, this ritual of the wedding.

So I think in the writing of that, I think [director] Michael Cimino understood that. I think he understood that each of these three – the wedding, the war and the funeral – were important because they helped tell the story of this group of friends, after the wedding what happens as a result of them going to war. Then the funeral, how they are still bonded together through the years.

Rutanya getting married in Deer Hunter 

One of the interesting things was that different cast members went to different towns to premier this movie. I went to Cleveland, Ohio to the premier and I remember sitting in the audience in the back and people were really, really . . .I had people come up to me: a man who had served in Vietnam that said that this was the first time they could really, really talk about it. This was the first movie that really got them. The first time they could talk about their experiences.

So it was a breakthrough movie of that time. I know Oliver Stone later had a movie about it, Platoon. It was a very good movie, but it was mainly in the war. So it didn't address this community of people that were affected by what happens in war.

I think the power of the film is, and I always tell people, I'd say, “Try to watch it. Get all your popcorn and goodies together and try to watch it without putting it on pause without interruption because I think there's a real power in how the movie pulls you in and you journey with these people you become fond of.”

It's interesting because I haven't seen this movie for awhile, many years. The Academy a couple years ago were honoring certain films and they honored that film. It's the first time I'd seen it in years and a lot of the audience that came had not seen it. It was a younger generation.

It was really fascinating how it still held up. People were still moved by it. It still is a wonderful movie and that's nice to know, because sometimes you see movies and they don't quite hold up. You go, “Okay, it was good then, but it's not good now,” but I think it's a real classic in that sense like any of the big classics that you see years later really fall in love with.

Michael was a wonderful director to work with. I loved working with Michael Cimino. He was a real pleasure. He really, really cared about the film. He cared about his actors. He's very supportive. I couldn't have had a happier working experience than working with Michael. It was wonderful.

JC: I have heard many stories about Michael’s style of working on Heaven's Gate. Can you tell me about Michael’s style of working on The Deer Hunter?

I think he worked us very hard. We shot the opening scenes in Reardon, West Virginia and Steubenville, Pennsylvania; that area where the steel mines are. Then we went to Cleveland, Ohio, to do this sequence. We shot in the worst heat wave I think that had been on record. It was like 120 degrees. My wedding dress never did get dry. It was so humid.

The funeral stuff we shot in Cleveland, too. So we were in this winter clothing. It was 120 degrees. It was unbelievable. We all worked sixteen, eighteen hour days and we worked very hard on everything. I don't remember Michael ever not working just alongside with us and trying to get the shot in the way he had visualized it with Vilmos Zsigmond, the director of photography.

But we worked our butts off on that film and I don't remember ever having a thing where we did … we did a lot of takes, but where it was not for the film. I really think Michael was wonderful on the film and with very difficult weather conditions. I think he really held it together.

Heaven's Gate, I think it got a bad rap. I think they were out to get him because remember, that same year John Huston made Annie and Annie cost more and lost just as much money as …

JC: Actually Annie came out a few years later after. Well, at least it was released a few years later.

RA: Nobody gave John Huston a bad rap. Nobody said, “Oh my God, John Huston lost all this money.” I think it was even more money than Heaven’s Gate. No, because John Huston was an icon in the business.

I don't know why people wanted to go after Michael Cimino. I'm not sure. I don't know. Maybe he got to be too much of a perfectionist. Maybe they blamed him for ruining United Artists. I'm not sure why. I don't really understand it. I thought in spite of everything that in Heaven's Gate you saw where the money went. The money went into the movie, whether it was perfect or not I can't say, but the money went on the screen. It didn't go into somebody's pocket.

JC: Michael, in all his scenes, does devote enormous amounts of detail to the visual quality of his scenes. However, while there was so much detail in the wedding scene itself, I couldn’t help wondering whether the dialogue was improvised or scripted?

RA: The dialogue was pretty much scripted. Of course you can't script the dance sequences because they're gonna be what they are, but the dialogue, it was pretty well scripted. I would say at least ninety percent of it. Well, in the wedding you're dancing and we had to learn these dances in just one day. The lady that was teaching us the dances said, “Oh, it takes six months to learn these dances.” We said, “Well that's fine, but we have to do this by tomorrow.”

So we spent the whole day with her and then at night we would be practicing the dancing in the hallways and trying to get it down. So on those sequences you can't write the dancing. Then you did what was there, but any of the dialogue was really scripted. It was all scripted.

JC: OK, so you had so far worked with Pacino and DeNiro early in their career. This time around it was Meryl Streep and Christopher Walken who were not known at that moment. With all these actors, did you have any idea that these people were gonna be very big?

RA: Well, no. When I worked with them early in my career we were all starting out. When I worked on Deer Hunter, of course Bobby was a big star by then and Chris and Meryl had a lot of stage credits. I look at them as colleagues, people that I did a film with, they're my colleagues in the film.

So no, I really didn't think about it to tell you the truth. Really I just never thought about that.

Al, after Panic in Needle Park and especially after Godfather, everybody knew he was gonna be a huge star, but he'd done a lot of theater before. I'd seen him do theater before in New York.

Who knows? You just don't know. You think somebody's gonna be a star and it doesn't happen and then other people, I have no answer how or why it happens.

JC: Now you were mentioning theater. I think I might backtrack a little bit. I'm not too familiar with your theater work, but can you talk about some of your theater work? Anything you did that you liked especially?

RA: Well, I just finished doing a show. We closed a month and a half ago on theater row on 42nd Street. I did a wonderful comedy called Murder at the Howard Johnson’s, lead character comedy. It was so much fun to do and the audience enjoyed it so much. It was really outrageous kind of comedy, but it was just lovely. So I liked doing that.

Rutanya in Murder at Howard Johnson’s

Then before that I did Tennessee Williams. There was a thing of Six by Ten by Tennessee Williams. So I did one of his comedies – probably the only one written – called The Fat Man's Wife. That was fun to do. So things like that that come up, I do them.

JC:  Now we're gonna get to the one film of them all, Mommie Dearest.

RA: Yes.

JC: Tell us from the beginning how you became involved in that.

RA: Well, Frank Perry was seeing people and he was one of the few directors that didn't audition, which I thought was wonderful. Neither did Michael Cimino, by the way. You just met with him.  So I just met with Frank. I think it was in December – it was very cold – in his apartment on Park Avenue.

He had set aside thirty minutes to meet with me and talk with me. So we just sat basically and talked. He sat behind his desk and I sat in front of him in a very comfortable chair and we just talked about – I forget what we talked about. Just general things. He asked me questions just about life and stuff like that.

So I left and then about two weeks later he called me on the phone and says, “Well, I want you to do this part.” So then I flew out New Year's Day. I flew out to Los Angeles. I think the following day we started having wardrobe fittings and screen tested some of the make-up and stuff. It was just one of those things. Who knows why he decided to cast me, but I'm glad he did. I had a lot of fun on that movie. It was really a good experience.

JC: Now originally Anne Bancroft was gonna be playing Joan Crawford. Were you already cast when she was offered the role?

RA: No. I'm not exactly sure. I know I heard that they had planned on doing the film with her, but then she dropped out actually several months before the movie started. So they hadn't done any preparations on her or wardrobe or make-up or anything.

So I think . . . I believe she was the only one that was set at the time and then for some reason she didn't wanna do it. Then they started casting the film for sure. They had not cast the rest of the film when they were talking to Anne Bancroft. Then I think a few months later they started casting and setting the production tables on it. It would have been a different film with her though, right?

JC: Right. But it was Faye Dunaway, and she’s primarily the reason we've talked about this film. Is this the film you get the most attention from? [I could not find an exact photo of Rutanya as Carol Ann so I included a clip that not only features Rutanya but captures the essence of Mommie Dearest.  Click here to watch the clip.]

RA: It definitely is. I have people, which is wonderful, that know these lines better than I know them. Honest to God. It makes me laugh every time. People come up and they give me the lines. I know the general gist of the lines fine, but they know them letter perfect. It's always amazing to me that it is the big hit that it is. It's really a kind of an iconic movie.

JC: When I was getting my hair cut, I was talking to this hairdresser. He just started a conversation with me and I also started talking about this blog we're doing. I told him you were my next interview. He asks what films you had done. I mention Deer Hunter, doesn’t know it. I then mention Mommie Dearest. Well, he knew that movie. Likewise, I then say you play Carol Ann. He knew your character, too.

RA: All the hairdressers know me. Sure. It's like their favorite film. Anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry.

JC: So, since we're never gonna hear from Faye Dunaway what really went on in the film, you're gonna have to tell us. You have to tell all the hairdressers and all the film’s fans. What went on when Faye was cast?

RA: I just finished my book, The Mommie Dearest Diary. I just gotta get the photographs together and I gotta get a foreword by David Kuntz who was one of the producers. So hopefully in the next couple of months I'll have that out and you can read all the day-by-day tales, which were kind of interesting.

I actually thought Faye did a great job in the film. I think she took it to the extreme, but she made a choice and she went with it, but in a way, I think the film became about Joan Crawford instead of Christina Crawford.

The book is very different. If you read Mommie Dearest by Christina, it's from Christina's point of view. I think when they did the script, somehow it got to be from Joan's point of view. It got to be about Joan more than about Christina.

So it got turned around a little bit, but I think it's kind of sad that Faye cut that movie out of her life and refuses to talk about it because I think her work is very different in that movie than the other stuff that she's done, and I thought it was very brave of her to do what she did in the film. There were a lot of ups and downs there.

The reason that I started keeping the diary was because, sometimes the days when she was on set, it got a little crazed. So I thought, “Well, in order to keep my perspective on it, let me just write down what's happening.” So that's what I did.

I wish she would get looser about it and just say, “Okay, I did it, I think I did a great job and so what. You like it or you don't like it.”  Whatever it is, but I liked her work in it. I thought it was a little large, but you know what? That's what she decided to do.

JC: What's interesting about the film is that she hit both extremes in critical opinion, I remember she won some critic circle award and then she was also nominated for a Razzie (an award show, the inverse of the Oscars, that awards the worst in film).

RA: Yeah. You know what I think happened is also that this was the very first tell-all book. I think people were shocked in the early 80s that somebody would really come and tell on a big movie star. I think the industry still held it against Christina that she would have exposed that. I think that the movie, had it been made five years later or ten years later, I don't think it would have had that shock value. I think it got that shock value because it was the first of the tell-alls.

Joan Crawford had a lot of, lot of fans, people in the business. The hairdresser that I worked with and make-up person I had worked with had all worked on many Joan Crawford films. Everybody loved her because apparently she knew all the crew members' names, she sent everybody gifts, she remembered their birthday. She would send out cards. She was very organized that way, and in a sense, the movie shows that. She treated them all as fans, the people she worked with. They were her fans.

So they were very loyal to her because they had only experienced that part of Joan. I think they were all torn with their loyalty. So because of that era, because a lot of people had worked with Joan Crawford, it wasn't long enough, it wasn't far enough away. I think if it had been done later this movie would not have been so vilified.

I thought the sets and the costumes in this film were absolutely stunning and should have gotten some recognition and some nominations, but there wasn't one single nomination. I think people really boycotted the film because they were angry that Joan Crawford had been in their eyes vilified.

But everybody has their own … the person you are in public is not always the person you are in private. So you have to be one way in public and then, especially if you're under a lot of stress and duress, in private it comes out. That's why people beat up their wives or beat up their kids or whatever. They have to put it somewhere and it's horrible when it happens.

I think the film just shows that she was adored in her public life, but I think a lot of the stress that she was going through came out in her private life with the little idiosyncrasies she had – cleanliness and neatness and the kids being a certain way and there wouldn't be a wire hanger and all of this stuff that she exaggerated. In a lot of people's eyes, you think, “Why would you beat up your kid for a wire hanger,”  but I think it came out in different ways.

I think that just at the time, the people felt that these things should not be revealed. I remember Helen Hayes: they asked her whether it was true, and she didn't go into it either. Nobody wanted to talk about it, but she said she thought Joan Crawford should never have been a mother. That was Helen Hayes' way of saying, whatever, that she had probably seen some things.

But I think it's just that era. I think it was sensationalized because of that era, but also it's really interesting to me. I was just at an event this summer at the Ziegfeld theater, which is a beautiful theater in New York. It holds about 1,000 people and the wonderful Hedda Lettuce was hosting it. There was a huge turnout. The whole theater was just packed. Over 1,000 people came and that was mostly my gay audience.

Invitation to Mommie Dearest at the Ziegfeld

They were so amazingly wonderful. Hedda interviewed me before the film started. I tell you I've never received such a great ovation and applause and just a wave of love just came from that audience that night. It was something I'll never forget. It was so wonderful.

Rutanya being interviewed by Hedda Lettuce

I thought, “Boy, these people that went into this film really love this film. I'm so happy to be in a film that is so loved by a certain audience.”  I'm thrilled. I couldn't be happier. It's one of these classic films more so than Deer Hunter that won the Academy Award. This didn't win anything, but it's memorable.

JC: No, it didn’t win anything, but just as Faye Dunaway got nominated for both a critics' award and a Razzie, you too came on for the same fate: the Razzies did nominate you, but I also remember Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice thought you were one of the best supporting actresses that year.

RA: Yes. He awarded me one of the best supporting actresses that year. Too bad that Razzies people didn't invite me. They didn't invite me there to accept my award. I would have showed up. I’m proud of my work in Mommie Dearest. I think it's wonderful.

Again, it's a movie that a lot of it was cut. Thirty minutes of that movie was cut out, but I guess somebody wanted to put it down or make fun of it or whatever. That's fine with me. It is what it is and I actually like it.

Again, I hadn't seen Mommie Dearest in a long time and then I saw it in the Ziegfeld. I thought, “This is a good movie,” and the audience knew all the lines. They were saying all the lines. It was a really fun night. I thought, “Well, if this movie can give so much pleasure so many years later, gosh, I’m glad to be in this movie.”

JC: One of the movies we'll talk about is Amityville II, and what's interesting about it is, as you know, that I've actually interviewed the actress who played your daughter, Diane Franklin.

RA: I love Diane Franklin. She's great. She's a lovely, lovely woman.

JC: Now in that movie, to be honest, the very first half about that whole dysfunctional family is not only the most horrifying thing to me in Amityville II but of the whole entire series.

The biggest thing is most haunted house stories, when they introduce the family, usually the family is well adjusted, but you and Diane are part of such a dysfunctional family. In fact, the family is already destroying itself long before they've entered the Amityville house.

RA: Well, I think that was Damiano Damiani, the Italian director, I think that was his vision of the movie. I think he brought that to the movie. That these people that are basically dysfunctional, because of the evil of the house, they really become crazed. I think the director, I have to say more than anything I think more than anything it was his vision of the movie he wanted to make.

I actually liked working on that movie also. We shot a lot of it – the exteriors of the house – in Tom's River, New Jersey, and then the interior, all the rest of the interior were shot at the Churubusco Studios in Mexico City.

Of course I loved working with Diane. Diane was just lovely. I actually liked working with everybody in the movie. Jack Magner played my son. He was terrific. Burt Young was wonderful. James Olson played the priest. I think it was a really good group of people.

Rutanya tries to stop her son from killing her husband in Amityville II

JC: But there are certain things about your character that I like. One thing is the constant referral to the priest to solve everything.

RA: Yes. Well that was Damiano, coming from a Catholic country in which everything goes to the religion and the religion would solve it and the faith and everything would turn out all right. I think that was his contribution that he felt like that is the way this woman lived. She lived knowing and anyone … she begs Burt Young on the stairs, “Please, please, just please come and please let the Father bless the house.”  Through the blessing of the house that everything will be fine.

I think a lot of people that are very religious feel that way. That they feel like problems in their life can be solved through these blessings and through their religion, but of course they don't live in a haunted house.

JC: The one interesting moment is that you're the only one in the family that is aware that there's something going on inappropriately between brother and sister.

RA: Oh yeah.

JC: And your first reactions is that you automatically blame the daughter, not the son.

RA: I think it's an old world way of looking: –  if a woman gets raped, a lot of people … “Well, she was wearing a short skirt. She was provocative. Her breasts hung out. She led him on.”  Well, this whole thing I think this is an old traditional way of looking, –  if something happens that somehow the woman has instigated it.

I think it still holds up today. Look at some stuff people say: “Well look at her. She was scantily dressed.” It's a terrible way to look at rape or anything there, but there is a tendency to blame women for this. I think that's what the mother does, coming from a traditional religious kind of way, that she tends to blame the girl instead of going into the guy, the son, and saying, “What did you do and why did you do that?” She blames the girl. That's exactly right. Exactly what she does.

JC: Right. Its scenes like that why I find the first part more terrifying then the second half, where it is copying The Exorcist. I find the realism of a dysfunctional family to be more scary than the haunted house stuff.

RA: That's interesting that you should say that. I think that's a very good point. I'm glad that you saw that. That's wonderful because I think that's exactly what Damiano had in mind. To show that you're right because it kind of gets into the haunting, becomes familiar to people, but hopefully the first part people can get into the craziness of the family.

JC: The next film, Vigilante, is how I found out you were on Facebook, because I'm friends with the writer of Vigilante, Richard Vetere.

RA: Oh yes.

JC: So he mentioned the recent appearance of Vigilante you did with him.

RA: At BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), yeah.

JC: Now, unlike Amityville II, you are a much more strong-willed character this time. When the gang leader is harassing the gas station owner, you're willing to smack him right there, the only one to take action at the whole station.

RA: Yes.

JC: Even though it's probably what led to him and his gang following you and your son afterwards.

RA: Yeah, the revenge. I gotta say I have not seen that movie in so many years and I'm sitting at BAM and I'd brought my son who'd never seen it and his friend. I thought to myself, “Oh, this is really interesting because I have no idea what this film is gonna look like all these years later.”

Rutanya screaming in Vigilante

It's one of these movies I think it's better today than it was when we made it. I saw it on the big screen, which also made a difference, because it had a grittiness about New York. It was that gritty New York Brooklyn scene and it was visually so well photographed and the people were so real that I told Richard Vetere afterwards, I said, “This was really a good script.”

I thought this movie really holds up. It's a real 80s movie and it really is of that 80s era, but it was a very, very low budget movie and we shot everything, again, it was in the winter. It was very cold, but we shot everything like it was basically one take because they didn't really have enough money to do more than one take. Maybe two takes, but it had to be shot very quickly and everything because it was on a very, very tight budget; no budget budget.

JC: Not to mention, your character shows some strength again, cause even when the gang does invade your home and attack you, you manage to give the same gang member a smack again.

RA: Well she's fighting for her life now. She's fighting for her life and the life of her son. Interesting, because the whole scene, running through the laundry, was sort of an accidental thing because I said, “I'm gonna run out” and I said to the director of photography, “Why don't we run through the laundry? Let's put up more laundry. Let's put up more sheets and stuff and have her run so there's a little obstacle for her to run through before she gets to the fence and realizes she can't get out. She's trapped.”

So that was done in a hurry and the DP said, “Oh, that's a good idea. Let's do that.” So that part wasn't really written in. We just improvised that part, but I thought that worked really well.

JC: I really like the performance of the gang member responsible for killing your son: Don Blakely.

RA: Oh, Don Blakely was a very good friend of mine. I did a play with him in Los Angeles called Dirty Laundry. I did a play with him and he died maybe a couple of months later. I didn't even know he died. Somebody came by and said, “Don Blakely died.” I was so shocked because I had just finished doing the play with him.

Don was a wonderful guy, a friend of mine for many years. Started in New York. He and my late husband, Richard Bright, had done a play together on Broadway. That's where I met Donnie. Donnie was just a great guy. He was just really a sweetheart. A gentle soul, a very gentle guy. So to have him play this killer was – it wasn't a stretch because he was a wonderful actor and he loved doing it because it was nothing like him.

But I was just really shocked when he died because I had just finished a six-week performance with him.

JC: I do also like the scene in Vigilante where you walk out on your husband: Robert Forster.

RA: Yeah. I think she just can't deal with any kind of reminder of her life and she feels like her husband failed her. He didn't show up and he didn't help them and he wasn't there. So she doesn't realize the course that he's gonna take. To her it's just, “I just have to get out of here. I can't be with you.”

I think that happens to people, too. Rather than coming together, they go apart forever.

JC: I’d like to talk about one of the other films you later did, Dark Half.

RA:Oh, that was George Romero.

JC: Right.

RA: I actually had that really violent scene where Timothy Hutton kills me.

JC: Yes. [To see this clip, click here.]

RA: That was the only scene that George Romero kept cutting back, cutting back, cutting back, cutting back. He said to me, “Rutanya, this is the only scene that really scares me.” He said, “This scene” – I said, “George, you of all people, you made all these movies –Night of the Living Dead, The Crazies.” He said, “No, this scene scared me. I had to cut it back.” So he did cut it back, but it's still scary. It's a scary scene if somebody you know is gonna get murdered. She gets murdered little by little by Timothy Hutton, The Dark Half.

So Timothy said to me afterwards, the next day he gave me a hug, he said, “I feel closer to you than I do anybody else on this movie.” I understood what he meant. When you go to those really dark places, you go there together and you do feel close to each other.

I haven't seen Timothy in several years, but if I would ever see him again I would feel a closeness to him because you go to these extreme emotional levels with someone and you just feel kind of bonded to them.

JC: You have done plenty of other films besides the one I mention. It’s such a huge resume that we would be here for days if we discussed them all. Are there any other film roles you wanted to talk about?

RA: Maybe just the one with Sean Penn where I play his mother, and also Nicholas Cage is in it.

JC: Racing with the Moon.

RA: Racing with the Moon, right.

JC: Okay. Let's talk about that then.

RA: That's my heartbreak movie, where I had some really great scenes, including the birthday party scene with myself, John Carlin who plays my husband, Sean, Nicholas and Elizabeth McGovern where my son turns eighteen. It takes place during World War II. Sean’s going to go into the Army. That was one of the most beautiful scenes ever. It was one of the few times the crew gave me a round of applause because it was really very emotional. When she's making the cake and the husband comes in and then she serves the cake to the three kids. It was cut out of the film. Cut out of the film!

Then when my friend, Laurent Bouzereau, who does the DVD interviews, when he interviewed Richard Benjamin, he said, “Well why did you cut that scene out of the film?” He said, “Oh, the scene's in the film.” Laurent said, “No, it's not in the film.” They didn't keep any footage of it in the thing.

In his mind Richard Benjamin had thought it was still in the film, and it wasn't. I thought when I was looking at it and they said, “Oh, we're gonna cut that scene out?” I said, “How can you cut that scene out? That is the heart of this movie for this woman.” But they cut it out.

Those are the things that a little bit of a pain is still there, thinking, “Oh, when the work is so good and it's not in the movie.”
It still affects me. And that's the business and you just have to say, “Okay, I have no control over the editing of it.”

So I don't wanna leave this on a down note, but I had such a good experience working with Sean. Loved working with him and Elizabeth McGovern. They were wonderful. They were so in love during that film. They were in love for many months after the film and I thought they were gonna get married for sure, but then their lives took different routes. So, I love them. Still love them.

JC: You've also done a lot of TV work. Is there anything in TV that you especially enjoyed?

RA: Well, my favorite stuff was the Law & Order stuff because I had three great parts. I did two of the original Law & Orders and I did a Law & Order CI where I play Rose. She's getting Alzheimer's, but she's got the stone baby. I loved doing those three shows the best of all my television because they had the best written parts. They were substantial. There were about three different women.

Rutanya as Rose in Law and Order: CI

It's all in the writing. I tell you, it's in the writing. If you have writing that just helps you soar. It helps you create. It gives you a really great foundation to take off and do your work and your interpretation.

I think of all the television I've done it's those three, the two original Law & Orders and Law & Order CI that I did with  Vincent D’Onforio. He's so wonderful. He's so giving. So supportive.

We had an eighteen page scene to do in the garage; you just don't get eighteen pages in television. The director called it the aria scene because you usually get one or two pages, quick scenes, quick cuts. So those are I think my favorite ones because they were just so wonderfully written and wonderful to realize these women.

I would love to be able to do another television show that was so well written. I loved doing You Don't Know Jack with Al, but it was just a short thing. It was quick. It didn't have the substance that the … I think the early Law & Orders were so well written that that's what made their shows so great.

JC: One thing: since we've become Facebook friends, I notice that in addition to acting in the past with classic actors such as DeNiro and Pacino, you are acting with contemporary actors such as Jessica Chastain, who now stars in Zero Dark Thirty.

Jessica Chastain and Rutanya Alda

RA: I played an older version of Jessica Chastain in a film called Stolen. Wasn't a very good film, but I played an older version of herself. She played the young, beautiful woman, which she is and I played … of course they put more make-up on me because I wasn't quite old enough. So they put that wrinkly stuff on, the glue stuff that makes you have all the wrinkles. She's a lovely woman.

That was four or five years ago that I did that. There's a career that's just happened in the last four or five years. What a career she's having, but it's support and she's getting these parts that are so well written and she's such a lovely, talented actress. But you get those parts, you can realize them, and she's certainly doing it. She's just a lovely woman. We had lunch when they were promoting her new film, Zero Dark Thirty. So I re-met her again. She was just a lovely, lovely person. She's having a hell of a career.

JC: One thing, particularly in acting, is that you've managed to stick around for a very long time. We hear about people who usually have their couple of years in the sun and then it's all over. But you are still continuing to act.

RA: Well, I've always been a character actress. I think that helps, but it's also what I love doing, Jeff. It's like I love doing this kind of work and it wasn't just for five years or ten years. That's why Lois Smith is such an inspiration to me, because she's had an even longer career than I have had. So wonderful, by the way.

Rutanya with her idol Lois Smith and Django Unchained’s Dennis Christopher

But I'm looking forward to getting into even into my older age so I can do the older parts. I saw that movie Amour, and Emmanuelle Riva that plays the older woman, the wife, it's an inspiration to me to see this woman be so great and so wonderful in this movie. I think it's an inspiration to me. I think, “Thank God I saw this movie because I wanna do some of this work as an older actress and as I get older even yet.”

Lois Smith is the same thing. She did a play when I was doing a play so I didn't get a chance to see her in the play she did because we were performing at the same time, but I hope people write things for older actresses. I think Michael Haneke who wrote Amour was just … it was a blessing that he writes parts for older actors that mean something.

So hoping that I will continue into my old, old age, and then I'll be able to do more really good work. I'm better now than I've ever been. I do workshops all the time and I take classes still.

I'm doing a workshop next week with Jean-Louis Rodrigue, my teacher, is coming in to do workshops. So I'm doing a scene for him that I was working on earlier. I think I'm at a point in my life where I'm probably better than I have ever been. I must say I'm a rare bird and a lot of actor friends make fun of me because I still study.

Jack Garfien was in from Paris this last summer. I studied with him for a number of months. So I pick people. My teacher, Jean-Louis Rodrigue out of LA, he comes in here, does several workshops a year. Then I go to LA and I take some with him.

So I'm always still studying. So I feel like I’m growing and I think a lot of people that are stars today, they've sort of stopped at a certain level of stardom, which is wonderful, but I wish that they would continue to grow. I think the only way you can grow is to really be brave enough to study and work on your craft and not in front of an audience, but really try in that workshop with other people and to continue growing as an artist and as a human being.

I think a lot of my friends don't do that and they think I'm really strange and weird, but I love it. I think you find certain teachers that are so wonderful that you feel like, “Oh, I wanna take that journey with them.” So I enjoy it, too.

JC: For any young upcoming actors, what would you say your secret is to have a long acting career as you had?

RA: Well, do what you love. If you do what you love, stick with it. Stick with it through all the ups and downs. I always say to a young actress starting out, “Do you have a second choice?” If they say  “Yes, there's something else I wanna do, too.” I always say, “Well, do your second choice, because I think in acting especially you have to have just no second choice. It has to be just that one choice. Because of that you stay with it.”

But to tell you the truth, if I had had a second choice, Jeff, I probably would have left acting ages ago. Plenty of friends that I started acting with who were very talented, left five, six, seven years into it. It's too painful sometimes and they had other choices. They left and they became very successful and now they have other professions.

But I say if you have no second choice, just stick with what you love and do it and just go and enjoy the ride. You'll have your ups and downs. You'll have your bumps in the road, but if it's something you love, you'll enjoy it. That's what I say to people when they ask me. I say, “If you have a second choice, do your second choice. Second or third choice.”

Sometimes people say, “Well there's a couple other things I've been wanting to do.” I said, “Well do them.” One parent looked at me and they thought I was being very harsh. I said, “No, I’m really not being harsh, because you have no idea what this industry will do to you. If you have other choices and they'll be in and out in a few years.”

So I say if you love it, follow your passion, follow your love, follow what you wanna do and get with your skills and take classes and study and grow and enjoy that. So just get better. So many people today, young people I think, young actors … when I was young everybody wanted to be good. Everybody studied. It wasn't just about being a star. We wanted to be really good at what we did.

So many young people today because they're beautiful or they're a certain type, they feel that they don't have to study. They feel, “Oh, I'm this type.” Well, yes, that might serve you for maybe a TV series or that might serve you for one or two movies, but in the long run that will not serve you, because you're gonna grow older. There'll always be somebody more beautiful and younger coming up. So if you have a craft, if you really develop your skills and your talent, you can grow into that, but if you just depend upon your looks, you're going to be unhappy in the long run. So I would say do what you love and get good at it. Study. Get good at it. Enjoy it and enjoy the study. Enjoy the thing of it. Life is too short. It goes by so fast. So enjoy the ride. Enjoy the journey.