Mariette Hartley

What took some time for me to figure out was how to have a life outside my career, to find a way to be inclusive rather than exclusive. It came only after years of psychotherapy and deep soul-searching.

But I will say that TV was a great education for me. It allowed me to develop techniques for getting the job done. It's the best training ground since B movies.

It hasn't been easy for me to get roles in movies after so much exposure on television. There's an anathema about TV, and breaking away from it is difficult for almost everybody.

I always tell kids, in high school or acting students, to do something else around acting, or not around it, just in your life that is of service.

For me, that is what my mission seems to be in my life on earth - to be awake, to stay awake, and to bring a certain kind of consciousness to the world, and to myself.

I've always done challenging pieces.

I really began to feel that the minute I started becoming successful, somebody would die.

I'd make a terrible therapist.

My greatest strength as a person? I guess I get caught in it a lot, but I think it's my ability to put myself in someone else's shoes.

I think my strength as a performer is my ability to straddle the fence between comedy and tragedy.

I'm not a compulsive worker, and I've never been a workaholic, so if I have a three-week vacation, I don't want to do a movie-of-the-week.

I think I've proven that I'm issue-oriented and I'm not apolitical. But I'm not a journalist and I don't want to be one with that veneer exterior.

What people don't realize is that I've been trying to get to Bethlehem since I was four years old. By that, I mean I've been trying to attain perfection since I was kid. And it took me more than 40 years to learn that it wasn't going to happen.

It's much easier to do a TV series because an actress can stay put.

NBC President Fred Silverman told me he would change my life, and proceeded to offer me a five to seven-year contract to replace Jane Pauley as co-host of 'The Today Show.'

Success in a career sometimes comes in strange ways. You grab it in whatever way it happens.

I didn't know anything about 'Star Trek.' I was doing theater a lot in those days, getting my life together. I didn't watch television. So, to come in on it was a really amazing experience.

I think the reason why 'Star Trek' works so well was its small family feeling. The show felt small, you could see the mistakes, you could see rocks weren't rocks. You caught them at it all the time, but you didn't care because you were so hooked to the people and to the stories. It was a fabulous show.

Well, thank God I have this face, and it's a believable face, and that also seems to be my acting style.

I'm in the public eye, so I have a responsibility as an actress to my generation. I think that's what acting's all about.

It seems to have taken me a long time to find my identity.

During the years I was growing up, I was trying very hard to be a regular person.

It's hard to be a long-distance mother.

I'm awfully tired of playing grieving people, which seems to have been my bent in the last five years. But it's an important part of my life and if I can express it in any way, I will - including doing seminars.

My father was a farm boy who never learned to be holding and supportive.

When you sing, you're releasing so much more than you are when you're speaking. You risk more as a singer.

The casting-couch routine has been going on for ages, from top directors to the lowliest agents. I had to attend a meeting where four actresses filed complaints against the same person over his moral conduct. It's not a funny situation.

I'm a firm believer in therapy.

I loved the feeling of pressure that you can get in Hollywood.

There are problems in Canada. There is a certain inconsistency in the acting. I don't mean to sound chauvinistic, but we do have a larger supply of good actors in Hollywood. There are good actors in Canada, but not as wide a choice.

I really don't know how women in television news do the job. It's a very male-oriented business.

I'd say Bill Bixby's character in 'Beantown' is Tom Brokaw with a heart and a sense of humor.

I love comedy. That's what I really look forward to doing. Enough of this heavy drama.

The problem with 'Today' was whether it was an entertainment show. Tom Brokaw and I had that battle for three weeks. He's a purist, and I was brought in for entertainment.

My happiest moments are when I'm on my high wire with the Johnny Carsons of the world. I don't have that opportunity if I'm doing other people's scripts.

It's what Kitty Carlisle said in her book: Don't interview people about what they do, interview them about what they love. I want my interviews to come out of the side pockets.

I'm at my best when I'm thrown, even though I don't like to be thrown.

I feel my free-est when I don't know where I'm going, when I'm not scripted, and doing crazy things.

My family is really a classy 'Simpsons.'

I have tried very hard to sing. I've taken a lot of lessons. I've always wanted to. It's always been my dream.

It was a stumbling career at best before the Polaroid commercials. I think they definitely, if there's a word to use, focused - pardon the pun, 'cause I don't mean it that way - my career.

I've never done a musical before. I've sung, off and on, all of my life. But I have never, ever done a musical.

Both Mom and Dad were blackout, killer drinkers. Dad came to school football games drunk. I'd find Mom passed out in the bushes, scared and hiding.

I've tried to tone down some of my peppiness, but for those who don't like it, just as many do like it.

My career was one mistake after another. I was working a lot, but nothing was building, it wan't going toward anything.

Film taught me an enormous amount about the internal life a performance has to have, and that life has to be real. You can fake it on stage, but not for the camera.

Nobody knew I could do comedy until I started Polaroid.

After I played the frigid doctor on the 'Peyton Place' series, all I got for a long while was offers for more frigid doctor parts.

I've been keeping journals since I was a kid.

A lot of people in show business don't know what I'm capable of doing.