Biography

You get nothing from the CBC. Maybe they're afraid of being in show business. Maybe it's the bureaucracy. But one feels they will cross the street rather than run into you and say hello.

[on radio acting]: It's fabulous what you can do with a microphone. The characters you have inside you, the feelings that you want to express that you can bring out with your voice, which you might be too self-conscious to do on television. TV is disturbing and frustrating to work in because it's just so quick. And in TV you're very much a functionary.

[on stage acting]: Whenever I've done a live presentation as just myself, my knees knock just like an old doorknocker. I have to wear skirts of a certain width. Crinolines are the safest things. But the nervousness never goes away. The teeth go to chattering, then the knees, and then the hands tremble. It's all very embarrassing.

[on Jackie Burroughs]: She's an interesting dichotomy of self-involvement and democracy. She's a humanitarian who doesn't give a damn about anybody. Sometimes she'll be in every one of your shots so that you never have a clean close-up. She'd twirl an umbrella behind you, or get her hand on your shoulder, or her head popping up over your shoulder. Once when Jackie was bobbing hysterically up and down in front of me, I said 'Will you get out of my face.' She recoiled like a snake and slithered away and didn't talk to me for about two months.