Finding yourself on a show that's appreciated by its intended audience is a very rare and lucky thing, so when you win the lottery like that, you don't want to rush its conclusion; you want to keep it going as long as you can.
You want good ratings, you want people to like the show, you want to be appreciated for the hard work you put in. You don't always get it. Every show is not beloved.
You want to feel appreciated, definitely. I think I've been very lucky to have a long enough career, so that I do get this kind of feedback.
They say getting a show on the air and having it be a success, literally, the odds are like winning the lottery. For me, I've won the lottery several times, so I've been awfully lucky.
You have a new audience for every show. Even though you do the same thing all the time, you gotta keep it fresh for yourself, and you gotta keep it good and interesting and something you want to do. I'm anxious to have a really terrific act. Whatever it takes it takes.
On the whole, lying is a cheerful affair. Embellishments are intended to give pleasure. People long to tell you what they imagine you want to hear. They want to amuse you; they want to amuse themselves; they want to show you a good time. This is beyond hospitality. This is art.
It is such hard work to keep your heart hidden! And worse, by the time you find it easy, it will be harder still to show it. It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.
I've seen productions where it feels like the actors are just tired and want to go home. That is one of the challenges doing theater - especially a long production - how to keep it alive for yourself and the audience.
You don't want to continue to do one thing and only one thing. You want to keep challenging yourself and if you do well at it, great, if you fall on your face, you tried. Like, she's really terrible at comedy! Who knew? But if you didn't try and put yourself out there you'd never know.
Here's the thing: When you tell somebody, 'I love you. I have always loved your work, and I want to show people a different side of you,' it's sort of an interesting thing that in my case, I've been very lucky, where they're like, 'OK.'
There is always an audience for different individuals, but critics sometimes stop the audience finding the show and the show finding the audience.
I've been really lucky to get on shows that stay on. It's one thing to book a show, and it's like winning the lottery again to have it picked up, and then again to have the show stay on the air.
I want to work for a long, long time and keep growing in my work, and if I am very lucky and very blessed, maybe somewhere along the line there will be one movie in there that becomes a classic.
If you want to be an entertainer and just keep your audience happy, that's one thing. But to be an artist, I think, means ultimately primarily pleasing yourself, and in that respect, you constantly have this sense of confronting the expectations of your audience.
Independent films are very hard to get made, but I'm lucky enough to get them made, so I'm going to keep doing it. I like my independence. I like being able to tell a story the way I want to tell a story. I don't like developing it with a team. I like coming to a story and deciding whether I want to do it or not.
I look at an audience kind of like meeting my in-laws for the first time. You want to be yourself, but you still want to be somebody that they like. When I go on the stage each night, I try my best to outguess my audience.
When you're in the eye of the hurricane, you're making the show - you just want the show to be good, you want it to be appreciated and those types of things.