“They were all wonderful [on Andy Griffith Show], but I enjoyed Andy and Don and Ron the most. Ron played little Opie so well. He really took acting seriously and worked hard to deliver his lines well.”

Andy was always fun and liked to tease. Don was nothing like Barney. Don was very quiet, which shows what a good actor he was.

I still stay in touch with Elinor Donahue. I’ve known Elinor since she was 14-years-old.

One reason [of Andy Griffith Show popularity] is because of the formula. It had comedy, but it also had tender moments. The other reason is because it was therapeutic. It helped people relax and unwind.

Some months I don’t feel too good and I think maybe I won’t go, but then when I go and get to be there with so many wonderful people it always lifts my spirits and makes me feel better. I wouldn’t stand in line for hours to meet me, but I’m so glad my fans do.

I did appear on other popular TV shows, like Family Affair, My Three Sons, Barnaby Jones and Little House on the Prairie.

Twenty years after the Andy Griffith Show when Andy did Matlock, he hired me for four episodes. I told him I wanted to develop an Aunt Bea type role for Matlock, but he was against it.

I would do an episode in two days and I got paid $500. After all the federal, state and local taxes were taken out and then my agent’s commission I only got $200 some dollars per episode.

I think the show has so many wonderful memories connected to it for lots of people. When fans come to see me at the Andy Griffith Museum they get so emotional. Some of them cry, lots of them hug me and some want a kiss on the cheek.

Don Knotts left [Andy Griffith Show] to pursue a movie career, so once he was gone I left too.

Andy [Griffith] and I spoke on the phone not too long before he died. I told him I loved him and he told me he loved me. He was a wonderful man.

I love to meet people for lunch at my favorite restaurant, the Loaded Goat. It is named after the Andy Griffith Show episode where a goat ate a bunch of dynamite.

Don Knotts won five Emmy Awards for Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role by an Actor or Actress in a Series [in Andy Griffith Show] in 1961, 1962, 1963, 1966 and 1967.

I was under contract with Walt Disney at the time. I was co-starring in my second season of a show called, Texas John Slaughter. The Andy Griffith Show hired me to play Thelma Lou. I only worked when they called me.

Everything about acting drives me and gives me the need to really try it. It’s an evolution – doing the same thing for 12 years is kind of a chunk.

For modelling, you have to be such a strong person in a way – or seen to be a strong person, do you know what I mean? But in acting you have to get in touch with all the vulnerability that you carry.

And what I love is that it’s such a creative process, with a bunch of people, and I wanted that more, which is how the acting thing came about.

For modeling, I was always creating characters. I dress like a tomboy. So, when I’d go into a shoot, there’d be all these dresses, and I’d say to myself, ‘Okay, this isn’t me. It’s somebody else. So, who is this person?’ Acting is the next level of that.

To be supportive of myself, I have to go with what I want to do. I started acting and I was so mesmerized.

If pity was always equally alive and acting in all individuals and in all circumstances, we could do away with moral. Unfortunately, it is not compassion, but rather it’s contrary, selfishness, that act most strongly in us.

I feel blessed to have had the accumulation of life experiences that I’ve had, life experience just adds to the depths of a persons richness, as with acting!

Sometime in my second year at Brown [University], I took an acting class. And the lightbulb went off for me. I fell in love with it. I realized that everything I was afraid of about myself, all my fears, could be used in that world.