Kathy Bates
Kathy Bates
Kathleen Doyle "Kathy" Bates is an American actress and director. After appearing in several minor roles in film and television during the 1970s and the 1980s, Bates rose to prominence with her performance in Misery, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress; she also received a Golden Globe. She followed this with major roles in Fried Green Tomatoesand Dolores Claiborne, before playing a featured role as Molly Brown in Titanic, which was at the time the highest...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth28 June 1948
CityMemphis, TN
CountryUnited States of America
The roles I was lucky enough to get were real stretches for me: usually a character who was older, or a little weird, or whatever. And it was hard, not just for the lack of work but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.
Because I'm a woman, because I'm a character actress, because I'm over 40, I'll be very interested to see, not just for me but for other actresses, how Hollywood treats us in the next ten, fifteen years. I'm hoping that it's not going to be so easy to shove people under the rug, as they have in the past.
The Oscar changed everything. Better salary, working with better people, better projects, more exposure, less privacy.
I find that I'm fighting to keep my energy and my passion centered on the work and not on "Will this get me an Oscar?" - which is the way people are starting to talk to me. I'm not interested in the way people are starting to talk to me. I'm not interested in looking at a role that way. That's not what I ever did, and it's not how I can continue to do my work.
Now if I go through it again, I think I would be a lot more open about it. I admire people who have been open like Melissa Ethridge and women I see walking around facing it without wigs and all of that stuff. I think I would be more courageous next time.
And people are always saying: 'Well, you go to Hollywood and you get yourself a film career or a TV series, and then you can do anything you want. Because then you've got the clout.' That had always sounded like a lot of hooey to me, but now I think it's true, unfortunately.
I was never an ingenue. I've always just been a character actor. When I was younger, it was a real problem, because I was never pretty enough. It was hard, not just for the lack of work, but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.
There's only maybe two pages in Jane's book that deals with the marriage because she was really talking only about her becoming an EMT and going through this midlife crisis, ... So when Alan Hines wrote the screenplay, he sat down with Michael Stern and really got down to the bottom of what was going on in that relationship. The work was there in the script.
I am a very private person, ... Not shy exactly, but it takes me a very long time to make friends. I still have such a hard time navigating the waters out here.
We need to let black America know, we do want you, but we want you on the terms of the United States of America, ... And we want you to be full and complete human beings.
For me as a director, it was important to create this couple as truthfully as I possibly could. Because as she's becoming more comfortable with her new life and her newfound freedom, their professional life is falling apart.
It's the game Brad loved, and he would have wanted us to play.
Jack made it very comfortable for me on the set. We'd met socially before but never worked together. You know, he's very professional, very disciplined and he's always prepared and knows his lines.
what informs her, both as an actress and as a director, is that she's a keen observer of the human condition.