The hope for me going back into television - after doing what will have been two years of radio - is to bring that authenticity with me. And, to not have the visual be overpowering the content.
Will it/won't it be back kind of game is never fun but I've been doing it for over 10 years and it's the name of the game really. As an actress, you never know what next year's going to bring, whether you're doing films or seasons for TV. It's just the way it is. You can let it drive you crazy, or you cannot. I choose not to let it bother me too much and just always hope for the best.
After all the stops and starts, we keep coming back to these two hearts. Two angels rescued from the fall, and after all that we've been through, it all comes down to me and you. I guess it's meant to be, forever, you and me, after all.
Well, let me tell you, after three years of Obama, we are hopeless and changeless, and we need Mitt Romney to bring us back, to bring America back.
There was a time when I said, "I'm going to go do a television thing," after doing all these theatrical films, and heard, "Television? Why are you going to go back to television?" It's an interesting place.
After all that I'd been through, after all that I'd learned and all that I'd been given, I was going to do what I had been doing every day for the last few years now: just show up and do teh best that I could do with whatever lay in front of me.
Should a young scientist working with me come to me after two years of such work and ask me what to do next, I would advise him to get out of science. After two years of work, if a man does not know what to do next, he will never make a real scientist.
There have been many things in my life that have tried to break me, going back to when I was two and three years old. It never stops - life will always push you to your limit. The only way I've managed to survive it all is believing in myself and knowing, somehow, beyond everything telling me otherwise, that I will succeed.
We didn't have television until I was about eight years old, so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television, you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things, and the comics, that I immersed myself in as a child.
Definitely haven't been doing writing. I'm so intimated by it now because I sort of put it to bed after I graduated, and I got so focused on acting. But it is something that I hope get brave enough - even if I just go back it for myself - it is something that is very close to my heart and I do hope that it's not something that is gone forever from my life. I guess that's just a choice; no one's going to that do for me, so I need to be the one to do it.
When I was a sophomore, a friend asked me to go to a local acting seminar with him. Two guys were very interested in me and wanted me to come out to L.A. I wanted to finish high school before doing anything like that. I figured they’d just forget about me, but they kept after me for two years.
When my generation, those early days of television - I know I've been thinking about this lately - my two flashes of me as a little boy. One, I'm standing in front of the radio freaking out that Nat King Cole's singing 'Lady of Spain', just this stuff coming out of the radio, and Guy Williams singing 'Wild Horses' coming out of the radio.
But doing 'Parenthood,' I've never ever been happier in 35 years. I drive to work and I drive home. I'm like a factory worker and that is in my DNA. I love having a steady job with the same people. It's made me so much calmer and more content. Now I just hope the series goes on for 15 years.
There are problems in doing television that have been plaguing me for years. I really like to have a lot of time, to rehearse and make things as good as they can be, but television often doesn't allow for that.
I have the best people around me. None of them have ever been on the radio. They're all such great people, and I found that I was able to be a better person when I was doing the radio show. It kept me from being a radio person.
I was mugged when I was 12. I had a portable radio, and I ran into this building and these two guys came in and hit me, busted me up and took the radio. After that I was very paranoid and I started taking kung fu and karate. But I didn't want to fight.
When I start to think about all the things, I'm doing sometimes I just have to thank the man upstairs. Because I'm doing the morning show here in Chicago 5 days a week, and I have the syndicated radio show that's been going on now for several years. In addition we are in the midst of taping 13 episodes of a television show-The Legends of Jazz: The Masters of jazz on PBS-TV.