Do you serve as a mentor to young actresses, like Keira Keeley (who plays Laura in Menagerie)?
Yeah. I’ve got it in ink [reaches for a paper towel on which someone wrote her a note and reads it aloud]: “You are the coolest. Thank you for sharing that story with me.” Sunday, we were back here talking about being an understudy, and the young woman who’s Keira’s understudy was feeling like, [dejected] “I’m just an understudy.” So I started telling her my understudy story. The first big understudy job I had took me to my first Broadway show, Bedroom Farce. [Producer] Robert Whitehead—he’s just my favorite, ever, and had it not been for him, it probably wouldn’t have happened—he made [director] Sir Peter Hall come see my understudy rehearsal. It was to replace an English actress. In Great Britain [where the production originated], understudies are just not thought of as a potential star waiting in the wings, the way it is here. So Sir Peter Hall thought he was nuts for saying it, but Robert Whitehead had seen me in rehearsal and liked me. And I got the job when the British actress le
