I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.
BETH HENLEYI just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.
BETH HENLEYThat was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you’ll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.
BETH HENLEYThe most glorious thing about working in the collaborative art is when you have somebody like Susan Kingsley or Kathy Bates who are better than your play.
BETH HENLEYWhat I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn’t you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed.
BETH HENLEYI love to work, although sometimes I can spend whole days doing nothing more than picking the lint off the carpet and talking to my mother on the phone.
BETH HENLEYPart of that is that New York has proved to be too much fun for me to live and work; I love New York so much.
BETH HENLEYI tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money.
BETH HENLEYI grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays.
BETH HENLEYI’m very into the first production of the show.
BETH HENLEYMy first few plays took place in the South and even The Lucky Spot was in the thirties but in Louisiana.
BETH HENLEYI love writing for the screen.
BETH HENLEYIt’s really interesting that whenever you do something that is so out of character, like having an emotional outburst, that you don’t get in trouble.
BETH HENLEYThat’s what I like about [smoking] . . . taking a drag off of death, Mmm! Gives me a sense of controlling my own destiny. What power! What exhilaration! Want a drag?
BETH HENLEYThe impetus behind going to graduate school was a year after graduating from college spent in Dallas working at the dog food factory and Bank America and not having met success in my chosen field, which at that point was being an actress.
BETH HENLEYSomehow I got to be one of five or six actors that the directors would use as guinea pigs at this directing colloquium, where people pay to listen to and watch the directors direct.
BETH HENLEYThere are probably brilliant people, geniuses, alive today who don’t even know how to say, “Hello, how do you do?” because their minds are absorbed with electronic images.
BETH HENLEY