Laurie Metcalf

“You know, if a TV show dropped into my lap out of the blue, I would have a hard time turning it down because there just isn't the money in theater that there is on TV.”

“I'm so thrilled to be here on the set of 'Supergirl!'”

“I was too practical to major in theater. Acting - what was I going to do with acting? There was no future in it.”

“I like to play a wide range of characters. The more they're unlike me, the better I like it.”

“I want to be thinking as quickly as I need to as soon as I hit the stage. I want to have a vocal warm-up.”

“I don't like the camera. I get very self-conscious with it and then spend way too much time not looking self-conscious instead of being free, as I do on stage, to do my work.”

“No matter how many times you've done it, the early stages of getting a show up on its feet is very hit and miss. There seem to be thousands of options on every page to discover.”

“I work just as hard and have just as much fun whether in a 50-seat house or in a 1000-seat house. It's a luxury to be in a tiny space every once in a while and a rush to be on a giant stage every once in a while.”

“I watch episodes of 'Rosanne' now where I don't even know what the ending's going to be.”

“I like contemporary, bare-boned writing. I don't like having the language that I barely understand get in the way of me interpreting it over to an audience. It's this barrier that I don't want to have to attack.”

“'Three Tall Women' is kind of fascinating. I had never seen it itself, and I imagine the audience will find it very intriguing to watch the reveal of who these people are and how they interact in the second act.”

“I was horribly shy all through grade school and high school. But somehow I got up the nerve to audition for one play in high school - 'Auntie Mame.' I got a small part as the fiancee who comes on in the end. I got laughs. I wasn't shy at all doing the part. I can do anything on stage and write it off as a character.”

“I don't know if ISU helped me become what I am, but I know that if I hadn't gone there, I wouldn't be what I am today.”

“I'm happy whenever I'm in a rehearsal room. I've always gotten all my energy and creativity in there.”

“I'm hideously shy as myself, but on stage I can run around naked and bite the heads off fish.”

“That was the beauty of 'Roseanne' and Roseanne herself. It could go dark; it could do issues.”

“I was an office secretary for a long time. A good secretary.”

“I used to drive myself crazy by thinking, three days later, 'Ugh, why didn't I play it like that? Ugh, now that line makes sense to me.'”

“I was always a secretary in the early days, before we decided we were brave enough to join Equity and see if this thing has any legs.”

“My profession is about as far away from growing up in southern Illinois as you can get.”