I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke.
I know what it meant to me to play the Reverend Mother, a role I've, in some ways, prepared a lifetime to do. It's why I took the part.
You know, when I got started on television in the '80s, you would go to the costume department, and if you were a female they put you into a skirt. And you had a pocketbook, usually a shoulder bag.
I always wanted to play a nun, and to play the Reverend Mother was a thrill of a lifetime for me. But, generations back, my family were not churchgoers, which is an unusual thing in the United States.
I do wish everyone would call me Leo. It's not that I don't like Melissa. But the more I hear it called out, the worse it sounds.
I haven't had a lot of experience with glamour. I've never had to mask myself, as many now not-so-young actresses have had to do. Female actors in that regard have a different lot in life than male actors.
