After more than fifty years in show business, actress Shelley Morrison, who played the wisecracking Rosario on the hit NBC series "Will and Grace," has more than her share of stories. This veteran of the big and small screen has also augmented her professional life with ties to her family and community that have made her a compelling person as well as a skilled performer.
Ernie Hudson may be recognizable to many from his roles in the "Ghostbuster" movies and some others, but his record as a working actor in film, television, and as a stage performer certainly earns his place among our list.
John Getz was born and raised in the Mississippi River Valley of Northern Illinois and Iowa. His mother, who'd abandoned aspirations toward an acting career to raise four children, and his father, who thought Cole Porter was right about most things, imparted their love for music and theater. Getz's intention was to write and teach but a long stretch of college, with a Shakespeare teacher who was passionate on the subject and a theatre teacher whose pleasure in his work was palpable, waylaid him.
Len Lesser was born and raised in the East Bronx. His first brush with acting was at a local Community Center called Juvenile House. He was 16 and didn't tell anyone he was taking a "Dramatics Class" because: 'That was real sissy stuff in my tough neighborhood'; he tells us.
Anne Gee Byrd grew up a cowgirl in Ohio and was introduced to acting at the University of Toledo playing straight woman to the comic ingenue. She married David Byrd at the Erie Playhouse and had seven years working, mostly together, in repertory theatres in the east. "We noticed that many of the best roles were going to what we then arrogantly referred to as 'half assed television stars' so we decided to come to L.A. and become same", She told us.
" I saw a woman wearing a sweatshirt with 'Guess' on it.
I said, Thyroid problem?
" I'll moider da bum!
While attending a Production Meeting
" This is no place to ask questions!!
Sage Advise to a Young Oregonian, Barbara Niven
" If you want to make it in show business, get the hell out of Oregon!
" Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships.
" The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.
" Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
" What's this business of being a writer?
It's just putting one word after another.
" Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
" Do, or do not. - There is no 'try'..
" No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.
" Life ain't no dress rehearsal.
" Television enables you to be entertained in your home by people you wouldn't have in your home.
" The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them!
" Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
" The embarrassing thing is that the salad dressing is outgrossing my films.
" It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
" I'll give you a definite maybe.
" The average American family hasn't time for television.
" The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense
" Kiss and make up...
but too much makeup has ruined many a kiss.
" The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter,
but, that all subject matter is presented as entertaining.…
" I must say that I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.
" All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.
" It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
" The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.
" The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.
To a young Eugene Roach on the subject of acting
" Don't ever let 'em catch you at it.
" I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.
" Seeing a murder on television, can help work off one's antagonisms.
And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some!
" I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
" Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by favoring to attempt.
" The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.
" When you're down and out, something always turns up -- and it's usually the noses of your friends.
" I can't wait to one day shoot in Detroit and say 'Let's have this double for Toronto'.
" The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.
Advise to a young Richard Roundtree
" Whatever you do in this business, It's much easier than lifting heavy things.
" No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer it has chosen.
" Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
" Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.
" My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
" From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
" The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it.
" Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
" Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
" Why should people go out and pay to see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?
" The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
" I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
" I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
From: "Tuesday's with Morrie"
" We must learn to love one another or die.... We must!
" You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say.
