Over the years, I have worked professionally as a musician, photographer, and writer. I've been able to earn my living in other ways, but I always knew I'd come back to acting.
What would you rather be? 52 and look 52, or 52 and look like a 28-year-old lizard?
I never expected to have such a long career, it's been 52 years.
I think my playing has been orchestral throughout the years, and this is another way of expressing that. But I primarily see it as the ultimate accomplishment of a musician. Composing makes me feel like I've finally gotten all the way up the ladder as a musician.
I'm 35 but because I've been acting professionally playing women since I was eighteen years old - I never played a teenager - people constantly think I'm like ten years older than I am, which is a little hard on my ego.
In most of the stuff that I've done over the years as a sideman, I wasn't really a session musician, because to me, a session musician is a guy who makes his living in the studio, and I never really did that.
I didn't think it would be possible for me to do music professionally. I was afraid to speak up and say I wanted to become a musician.
This has been a really interesting journey, the seven years I've been at NASA, and it's been a real exercise personally and professionally, but also spiritually.
Well, I've been acting for 50 years now, professionally. I've been acting a lot longer. My mother reckons I was acting when I got out of the womb. But because I've been working in the theater, I've probably only done about 25 movies but I've done more than 100 plays.
These past years have been really transitional for me in every aspect - personally, emotionally and professionally. I was excited and nervous and anxious because I literally had nothing to fall back on. This is my own thing, it's all me. I spent a year working on the record and really wanted to spend time on what it was going to represent and how it was going to represent me in this time in my life.
To be embraced by Hollywood when I'd been acting professionally for almost 50 years seemed unbelievable. I've been so welcomed in such a warm, generous way - it seemed crazy not to take advantage of it. I hope for another 20 years where I can still keep going.
I'm always writing. And, I mean, I always counsel people when they call me a musician: I really do not have the skills of a musician. I really don't think like a musician, though I love music and I perform and sing.
Well, since I'm six years old, I've been playing the violin, the piano, I've been singing. It's always been a dream of mine, but I really never had the courage to actually go and do it professionally.
I did community theater and kids programs at professional theaters and plays at school and voice lessons for seven years. I stopped because it was so time-consuming. But then I realized that I had access to this world where I could go on auditions. And there wasn't too much of an identity crisis when I started acting professionally because I had been acting longer than I had been writing. It didn't feel new.
My intention when I came into this industry was to be a musician, not necessarily a recording artist, just a musician in general. And that's the reason I went to college and got my degree, which has been great for me. It's helped me a lot with my career.
I've been acting since I was six years old, but not professionally.