When I started off as an actress, I did at a play at the Taper Too Theatre here in Los Angeles, called 'In The Abyss Of Coney Island.' That was more of a dramatic play. It was a small theater house. This was the first time I was literally on the road, doing a play, for four months.
Broadway was always sort of my trajectory before I found film and television - that would be really tremendous.
My dream as a youngster was to be like Olivier. To be a great stage actor. To be a great Shakespearean actor. To me that is the Olympics of acting.
Fortunately, our audiences are used to a kind of boredom in the theatre, and if the writer is skillful, he will flatter them into thinking: 'Why, that's us up there, and aren't we - for all our little foibles - pretty nice guys and gals?'
Television is great but for me, as a performer, nothing compares to a live theatre show.
When I was 12, I did this show on Broadway called 'High Society,' so we moved to New York for the run of that.
My aunt Marcia Cope-Hart was in 'Phantom Of the Opera' in San Francisco for quite a few years when I was growing up, so we would go into the city a lot to see her.
Performing on Broadway is an honor and a challenge for any artist.
It's a very tough time for the playwright. Broadway has become almost a musical comedy theme park with all these long-running shows.
In January 1962, when I was the author of one and a half unperformed plays, I attended a student production of 'The Birthday Party' at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol. Just before it began, I realised that Harold Pinter was sitting in front of me.
There are so many huge roles in the theatre: if you've got the option to play Hedda Gabler on stage, why wouldn't you choose that over a three-line part in a Hollywood film as somebody's maid or somebody's wife or somebody's best friend?
If you can't get an acting job, then go backstage. Or take tickets.
It's the coolest job to be on Broadway.
At 17, I became a member of the Boston Repertory Theatre. I had an opportunity pretty quickly and performed with the theater for six years.
Les Mis' was an amazing experience, to be in the original cast of 'Les Miserables,' and 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' God bless it that was fantastic, at the London Palladium the biggest theatre in London the most successful show that has ever been at the London Palladium, that was fantastic.
I've done panel shows, which I enjoy, and on those you're recording half-an-hour of TV and sometimes they film for two hours. But with 'Britain's Got Talent,' you're on camera for eight hours, with a large theatre audience watching - and in between you're being filmed for ITV2 as you eat your lunch.
As an actor, I always think that if someone does pick up a phone during a performance, something dire must be happening in their lives that is more important than theatre - some kind of tragedy they were attending to, or something. It's very uncomfortable if you don't know why they would pick up a phone and talk in the middle of a show.
If you saw me in 'The King and I,' I had that angelic, virginal face.
I did 'My Fair Lady' for almost 3 1/2 years, eight performances a week. It was a marathon.
The first big lead that I had on Broadway was in a show called La Strada.
My father was an actor, and we have the most important theatre company in Montreal.
There's a play that Chekhov wrote called 'Uncle Vanya,' and I when I was in school, I played Sonya, and sometimes people ask me if there was ever a role I could play again, that's definitely the role I would play again: Sonya in 'Uncle Vanya.'
I think it's sad that movies and television have caused the theatre to fade as a popular art form. I hope to get young people into the theatre and expose them to Shakespeare.
I love Broadway shows.
Sure, I miss some things about the stage. The thing I like is the immediacy. But then I complain, 'I gotta do the same part for six months.'
