Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Actors Studio with Ellen Burstyn & Estelle Parsons

studio's success. When the doors of the Actor's Studio opened in nineteen forty seven, in walked actors who would become some of the most famous names in show business. Paul Newman, James Dean, Eli Wallack and Anne Jackson and Marilyn Monroe. They all flocked to the studio to embrace the philosophy

of Russian actor director Konstantine Stanislovsky. By the nineteen sixties, these lessons, imparted by founders Cheryl Crawford, Bobby Lewis, Elia Kazan, and later by acting guru Lee Strassburg, have begun to influence nearly every serious actor in the world de Niro, Pacchino, Nicholson, Bancroft and Moore. Today, some seven decades since its inception. The need for truth in acting, referred to as the method, can be found to some degree in almost every acting

program around the world. My guests today are two women who have made extraordinary contributions to continuing the work of the Actor's Studio and whose careers have resulted in significant recognition. Gastelle Parsons won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Bonnie and Clyde, the second film she ever made. Her time as an actor and director in the theater is no less significant. She's earned five Tony nominations and two Obie Awards.

Parson's work at the studio began in nineteen sixty two and includes her roles as Artistic director from nineteen ninety eight to two thousand and three and co Associate Artistic Director, a title she currently holds. But first my conversation with another leader within the organization, my co president, Ellen Burston. Burston is perhaps best known for her performances in films like Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, The Last Picture Show,

The Exorcist, and Requiem for a Dream. She also has the distinction of winning the Triple Crown of Acting an Oscar a Tony and two Emmys. I was curious how she first found her way to the actor's studio and how her craft changed when she began her work there. Well, I've looked at some old television shows. There's Western that's particularly amusing. Miss me in a cowboy hat on a horse. It makes me that when I look at it. You know, without studying, if you're born with a certain talent for acting,

you can kind of do it. You know, you make say the words and make sense of them and cook up some bit of emotion sometimes, but it's not real, that's what it is. It's just not real. There's a nasty word in our field. Indicated I was waiting for you. Yeah, yeah, it was indicated acting. It was good enough to get by,

to have a career and doing guest shots on television. Now, my first thing was a lead on Broadway, but they were looking for a model, and I was a model at the time, so I looked like the part and I could sort of stumble about the stage and get by. But after working for ten years without any real training, I had this sense that there were actors around who knew something I didn't know. You know. When I saw Branda went and Jimmy Dean and Joanne Paige and Kim Stanley.

I went, what is it? What if they got that I can't access? What is that? And I didn't know, but I suspected that it had something to do with Lee Strassburg. And a date came when I was cast in a movie called Goodbye Charlie, starring Tony Curtis and Debbie Reynolds and Walter Mathou and I was co starring. And I was sitting on this set one day, all done up with the wig that had been chirlimit claims at one time, and a dressed designed by Edith Head

and makeup done by Debbie Reynolds brother who Yeah. So I was done up, sitting on stage and I looked around and I said, well, this is it. This is the big time, next step, but I'll be playing Debbie Reynolds park and this voice that it speaks to me in my head on occasion at very important moments, said very clearly I don't want it. And that was an absolute chanting point. I packed up my house and my kid and my dog and moved back to New York and went to Lee Strassburg and basically said, teach me

and you've been out there for a while. Yeah, you get out there and you do Doctor Kildare seventy seven Sunset Strip, Ben Casey, Perry Mason, Wagon Train, Gun Smoke, Big Valley, Virginian, The Time Tunnel. I mean, my god, this would be shorter of the shows you weren't on. Yeah, I mean I saw all those shows there a The Time Tunnel was we went back in time to the earthquake in Krakatoa and one of the biggest earthquakes ever

until that time. And in the final scene we had run out of time and money for the producer wanted it over soon, so he came on stage with a pot and a wooden spoon and he said, when I hit the pot, you all wiggle to the right, and I'll hit it again and you will wiggle to the left. And that was the very quake. That was the earthquake? Are you kidding me? That's what happened. That's when you knew it was time to go home. Actually, it took

the big movie, the Debbie Reynolds. Yeah, she was wonderful, nothink against sure, but it was that kind of movie, you know, It was very glossy. Yeah, and I look at it now. I looked at it recently and it's I look good. Yea, I'll give it that. Yeah, it was good. Mallie Reynolds was good. Yeah. He was Elvis's makeup man. Oh yeah, yeah, really was. Yeah. But you know, it was a certain kind of movie that I just didn't want to do anymore. So I won't know what

to call him. But when you have a chance to do that what I call brass ring acting, you're out there and you've got a lot of shots at success and money and fame and that kind of working for the man out there, and you come home, you are you out of work for a while, and you're and you're being tested, and you would come back to New York and you wonder, have I made the right decision or did things become what you hope they would in New York relatively quickly in terms of the quality of

the work. Came back to New York and what happened. I went to Lee, I was interviewed by him. By interview, he sat and look, he didn't look at me, and he asked me questions. He said, what kind of music do you like? And I said classical? And he sort of nodded a little. He said, what's your favorite piece of music. I said Greek's Concerto in a Minor And he said what pianist? I said, Walter easy King and he nodded, and I saw this smile at his face,

and oh, that was a good answer. I got that right, yeah, right. And then I was accepted into his private classes, and I did an audition for the studio for several years, and finally one day I did it. See this has happened the actor studio in California. And afterwards Lee said to me, how long have you been studying with me? Dear? I said seven years? And he nodded and he said, yes, that's usually about what it takes. And that's when I can an auditioned for the studio. Did he teach out

there as well? In the summers he go out to California and teach out there. Yeah. And when you took the private class that you say private meaning one on one or you want a couple of other people? Oh no, I meant, I meant not. The actors was a class, right, And how many people were in that class? I would say in attendance on any given day would be twenty

well that meant that better class. Yeah, when you're in a room with him for the first time and he's teaching you, was it a question of him trying to push you toward things he wanted you to do, trying to push you toward things he wanted to stop you from doing. What did he say? Well, I'll tell you the first time I worked for the first exercise is to create your morning cup of coffee or whatever you drink.

It's not there, it's imaginary. So there are five people working on the stage, at each doing a different sense memory. I'm creating my cup. I see out of the corner of his eye. He picks up the cards with our name, looks for a name, and then it says l I say yes, and I stopped working on the cup. He says, no, no, continue working on your cup, which I do. Long pause. Do you ride horses? I used to? Did you ride? Well? Well, pretty well, I had my own horse. Long pause, Well

you don't have to ride that cup? What go on? Make a mistake? Do it? Make a mistake? And I start crying, And I cried for two weeks. Now what were we talking about? I'm creating a cup. He's asking about horses, And the result is I'm crying for two weeks because he sought something that was part of my conditioning that needed I needed to stop, and I didn't know how. And he was telling me it was time to give up my conditioning, that that was past, that

I could be open, I could make a mistake. I didn't have to be afraid of being punished if I made a mistake. And after two weeks, actually it was my husband who said at the time, who said, well, maybe you can just consider all of that stuff a crutch that you've needed and you don't need it anymore,

And I went, yeah, right. So I then went back to Lee without the crutch of my personality I had developed from my conditioning, and became open as myself whatever that was, which I didn't know, but I was willing to discover. The studio. Obviously, this is the seventy fifth anniversary.

The place starts in forty seven, and you don't walk in the door till twenty years later in sixty seven, and by the time you come is it would you say not in a negative way, because these things are unavoidable, but would you say that it was like becoming like the hip thing to do. Did people I mean the fifties were a certain flock of people were there, and then in the sixties you were there. Did a lot of people were a craving the method, acting experience in

order to strengthen themselves as actress. What was the traffic like there lots of people trying to get in. I don't know that. I don't have that information. I do remember I wasn't passed to my first audition. I had

to audition again. But when I did, Lee Grant told me, because she was judging along with me, that when I came out and sat up by dressing table and I was using the fourth walls a mirror, and I was looking at myself in the mirror, and Lee said to her, you see, when they're right, they don't even have to talk. But by then I had learned how to just do

the work. You know. The real issue, I think is to be able to stay on stage doing what you're doing, and not be projecting yourself out in the audience wondering how you're doing. That's really what it's about. That you can just be where you are, be present in the moment, do just what you're doing, and not be judging yourself.

Would you say that before you went there and before you started that work, when you went to work, beyond that point, once you sort of to accrue these hours there and these experiences there, did to change the way

you worked itself beyond job you wouldn't do. Oh yeah, I mean if you look at the Last Picture Show, which happens to be an answer in the New York Times cross robots this morning, the Last Picture Show was the first time that I was doing the work in a picture that you could see it and say that's the work, and the director allowed that. The director wanted. The director was thirsty for that. Peter said, a wonderful thing I've always treasured. I had a scene where I'm

sitting in the living room reading a magazine. My boring husband has fallen asleep in front of the television set, and it's I'm just bummed out that this is my life. And I hear Cal's struck drive up, my lover, Oh good, cow's here, And I put the magazine down and I go to the door expecting to see him. And I opened the door and it's my daughter and she comes in and first of all, damn, it's not Cal. It's my daughter two that was cal struck. What is my

daughter doing with Cal? Oh? My god? My daughter sleeping with my lover? And I had to do all of that without a line. And I'm sitting on the set as they're lighting, and I'm thinking about all of that, and I say to Peter, Peter, I have eight different things to go through here and no line, and he smiles like the cheshire cat and says, I know. I said, wow, am I supposed to that? He said, think the thoughts of the character, and the camera will read your mind.

That's the best advice. And they director ever gave me. Who is a cinematographer? Do you remember? I think it was Bob's for tease. I want to tell you a story. He told me. It's a show bit story. He was making some movie. I don't know what the movie was, and the leading man completed his last scene. They did a close up and he died, but they hadn't shot the person he was talking to the reverse of her close up, so they propped him up. It shot over his shoulder. Is it even legal? No? Oh god, I

can't even believe that. Oh god. Yeah, you've had great leading roles and have had great success in the movie business with leading roles with great directors. You go on to do The Exorcist. The two greatest horror films and from my money, are Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcism. One

of them is kind of a baroque fantasy. Some of the acting gets right up to the edge and it's dripping with a kind of not an access but like the right amount of a kind of weirdness or is The Exorcist is about this incredibly awful and not necessarily authentic thing that people are possessed in this way that's played completely straight. Every actor walks in and they play the whole thing completely straight. You and bon cdo and

Miller and Lee J. Cobb, Lee J. Cobb. Really, Now, when you do that movie, did you rehearse but tweeks? A couple of weeks of rehearsal. Yeah, on the set. All of the house stuff was shot on a sound stage in New York City, you know, those great movies of the seventies. We rehearsed two weeks before when we did the Last Picture Show. We were in that Texas town and all of us were staying in a motel by a highway. None of us had cars. We were all unknowns. We didn't get those kind of contracts where

we had cars. So we were picked up in a bus, taken to rehearsal and then dropped back in the motel. So we only had each other. So we spent all of our time when we were working together in our hotel, you know, in one of our hotel pool Yeah, and with a guitar, you know. Jeff Bridges brought his guitar and we sang. And Chloris Leachman was going through a horrible divorce and so was I, and we sat on the floor and cried together about our divorces. But in

our Texas accents, you know. And The King of Marvin Gardens, which was a wonderful movie that I was in that wasn't a big success, but it's considered a classic now with Bruce Dern and Jack Nicholson. We had two weeks of rehearsal and we did with The Exorcist, that's where the creativity gets born, you know. And I think they make a big mistake in all of the movies that are made now by the corporations that have taken over the movie students to cut that out of the budget.

You know, that's not important to them. Those movies in the seventies were great for a reason. They respawned from Some writers need to write that story, you know, and some directors need to bring that to life. It was an art form, you know. It wasn't something that an algorithm said, if you put these elements together, it'll make

X number of dollars. What do you do when you're doing a scene and you're a person who is who works a certain way, and the other people are not doing the scene in a way that you might be able to please with, You don't say anything, And it was you know, you only keep your focus on yourself. Well, no, then that person, the character is behaving that way. You know, that's the reality I'm in. You can only take what

they give you. Yeah, and if you're in this scene, if you're present, then whatever that person is doing, that's what you're dealing with. Somebody who behaves like that. Have you ever walked away from apart in film, TV or a theater that you realize at some point you thought, I'm not right for this part. Well, I've turned down a lot of films, Yeah, I mean it turned down a lot of scripts that I read and I didn't like.

But then once I like a script, and I usually ask to be the director, and I feel sympatical with the director. Then what comes comes You did a sitcom and I did a sitcom, And what is the applicability of method acting in the world of sitcoms? Like when you go to a sitcom? What did you tell yourself? Did you sit there and say a lot of that's

going to have to go out the window. Because, of course we were joking before you came in, my producers and I about you being a sandwich in between Megan Malali and Elaine Stretch that we would love to have seen. We would love to have been a fly on the wall on that set. Yeah, I found Angie upstag. Molly the dog has decided to have puppies in Nana's closet. I'm sorry to interrupt your class, Ellen, but there's something in my closet and it's growling. Excuse me? Would you

said outside? I don't want to know. I am trying to teach class in there, Allen. Class is not something you teach. You either have it or you don't. Megan was my choice and it was her first show, right, She had never done anything before, and she auditioned for it and I just fell in love with her wanted her to do it. The director had another pick and I fought for Megan, and Fanny went because you know, it was called the all person show. He and I

were not a happy marriage that that director. We were partners in it, and we did never have the same idea what the show ought to be. And he's very talented writer, director, and especially with comedy, but we just had different backgrounds and different training, so it didn't work. I just remember, you know, we were playing to a live audience, so it was like doing a live show, and it just never it was never gibing. I. I

had a friend who was assisting me. I mean, she was being my assistant on the show, and I have this image of her standing outside my dressing room with her arms folded, keeping everybody out as I cried for a long long time. You know, she was like the guard at the door as I cried. So it was a miserable experience. Elaine as my mother, and Elaine was I think only seminary exactly, but she's a wonderful, amazing talent.

So I Elaine played my mother that's the other thing we have in common, Actors Studio co president Ellen Burston. If you love conversations about creativity and craft, be sure to check out my episode with Distinguished Actors Studio member Dustin Hoffman. Someone said to me, if you want to know Lenny Bruce, you gotta go see Sally more his mother. She introduced me to one of his best friends, and he in turn introduced me to friends with Lenny. They

all said the same thing. He was always very quiet, and suddenly he's gone because he wasn't shy guy. And he's gone, and they look around. I don't know where he is, and then they find him in the kitchen talking to the help. He loved to just talk to the people and ask questions and find out stuff. The musicians were more important to him than the audience. Lennie felt that if he could crack up the musicians than he was getting Somewhere here more of my conversation with

Dustin Hoffmann at Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Ellen Burston shares some of the best advice she gives to members of the Actor's Studio. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to here's the thing. Ellen Burston began her time at the Actor's Studio in nineteen sixty seven, but quickly rose through the ranks, serving as a moderator, artistic director and now co president. I wanted to know when and how she first became a part of the

leadership of the studio. Lee died in the early nineteen eighties, and there were many of us on the board who came together to, you know, keep the studio together. Al, myself, Paul Newman, Shelley Winter's, Arthur penn, A Stale Parsons, many others. And at first it was decided that there would be a troika which was me and Al and Arthur, I think, and then after a while it just got down to me and Al, and then Harvey became a co president too, and then when Harvey's term was over, you joined. So

I've been involved right along. Lee started me moderating right after I won an Oscar and which was I think seventy four, So I had always been in a position of a moderator at the studio since then and on the board. So I've been deeply involved the studio since in the nineteen seventies. You know, the times I would teach acting, not moderating. Obviously, there's a profound difference, as

you will know. But when I would teach acting, which I hate it, I really didn't care for it because so much of it is you know what you bring you, how do you have it? Or don't you acting? I think lessons could make you a better actor, but can they make you a good actor? I don't really know. I can't make you a talented actor. Yeah you either yeah you have the talent or not. Now the studio now,

it's seventy fifth anniversary. When I first came and was invited by Corsaro to come and attend and be an observer, many many years ago, there were people there who were members, who were older, many of them not having the same career that you had. They hadn't worked in quite a while. Maybe they were really that the studio was really their only link to the business in a way. They weren't working in film or television or theater. But I see now there was a different wave of people coming there.

There are younger people coming through there now. It's like a new crop of people that are really finding this work essential for them. Do you feel that way that there's a new generation of people coming through the doors. I do. You know. Kazan said when he started this studio that he wanted to establish a spiritual home for actors,

and that's what it's become. It's a place where actors can go to work on their craft, to work on their ability to do their very best work and transcend what's naturally available to them without that kind of deep study. You know, I'd say to actors, you can't just act when you get a job. You've got to be in shape, You've got to practice, you have to be doing it. Horowitz, who is the greatest being pianist of his time, practiced eight hours a day every day of his life until

he died. And that's the kind of dedication it takes to be an artist of any kind, if that's what you're interested in being. That's what interests me about acting is the art of acting, and that's what the studio is home to for young actors, old actors, any actor who wants to come and experience the art of acting, whether they get a gig or not. Who's one person you worked with who you noted that they worked most

the way that you do. Someone when you were working with them, I thought, oh God, this is really a treat. Even Le Gallien, my god, subscribe. Well, you know, she had a repertory company in New York, and she was the only person who had a repertory company in New York for many years. And she was a great actress, but she had never been on film. She was only

in the theater. And when I made my favorite film of all time that I made, Resurrection, I had to have a grandmother, and I invited Eva le Galliant up to lunch and I asked her if she would play my grandmother, and she did, and the experience of working with her. She had a moment where I was saying goodbye to her and she had the line, that's it, isn't it. If we could just love each other the say way we say we love him, I expect there

wouldn't be such bother in the world. And every time she said the word love, I swear her voice dropped into her heart and pushed tears out of my eyes. I look, you, come on, yeah, that's it. If we could just love he shot as much as we say we love him, I suspect there wouldn't be the bother in the world. There is every take, no matter how many takes or angles we did. It came right out of her chest, her heart into my tear ducks. She was the most remarkable actor I ever worked with. And

she's only been in a film once. And it's my favorite film, Resurrection, and you can now see it. It's on road. Cool, it's available. I play a healer and I put the film together as your favorite film you ever did? Yeah, okay, and nobody saw it, although it's one of the films from its nominated for. But she was the greatest startist I ever worked with acting artists. Thank you for doing this with me. It's my professure.

Ellen Burston, my next guest, the great Estelle Parsons has done everything from ethel Merman musicals to playing Rosanne's mother on the beloved TV sitcom to directing the Bard on stage, all within her long and illustrious career. After some false starts in both the legal and political professions. I wanted to know what had eventually led her to become an actor. I didn't have any path in my life. My mother took me to There was a community theater in Lynn, Massachusetts,

Tavern Players. It was run just by chance by a woman, an extraordinary directing type woman. And they did plays for children. Someone wrote them in the community, and they did plays for grown ups. And it was what you now would call a really good community theater and really good people in it. I mean, I was seven. How do I know a good person a bad person? But anyway, my mother wanted to be a part of it. Every I guess her social set was a part of it. So she took myself and my sister to it. So I

started acting then in children's plays. In the first thing I did, I was a frog and that was great. But then it came time for the performance and I had this frog suit and then I put on the frog head and went out on the stage to do my part. And I thought, I'm never gonna wear anything over my head on the stage again. And I never have. And that was the beginning of my understanding acting acting

as something that happens between people and an audience. You know, That's really what it's all about for me, theater acting. I don't know whether the other stuff people do TV films is that acting. Sure it is, but it's different. I don't want to mention just for our audience's edification here that you're one of the few actors I've ever met in my life who buy a good amount. Your Broadway credits exceed your film and television credits. So funny,

isn't that funny? So you're exposed to this in this theater as you're a kid, but you go on to the Oak Grove School for Girls. Well I was boarding school. I mean, you have to go to school, but I didn't think acting was something you did when you grew up. You know, I'm from New England. I'm from an old New England family. Back to sixteen thirty two. Yeah, when you went on to go to Connecticut College, what was the sense of what you wanted to study there. I

didn't want to study anything there. I didn't want to go there. I grew up at Jack Lemon. I mean, he lived four houses from me. So he played the piano. I played the piano, and he made up all these wonderful songs, and so I had a whole routine that I could do, you know, in bars and stuff at parties. I'd just go to parties and wait for someone to say, hey, stelcom play the piano, and then I'd do my routine with these songs of Jackies and some others that I

threw in myself. So that was what I really wanted to do. But it was just a natural thing to go to college. But all the time I was there, I said to my father, look, people come up from New York. They hear me, they see me. I've got cards. I can go start in New York. He said, no, you want to finish college. You'll be glad that you did.

I was, of course, in the English department, and I went to the first class and they were studying Macbeth, and mister Thuram, who was head of the whole English shebang, started talking about Macbeth and I got so offended, offended so badly that they would sit there and talk about Macbeth as an intellectual thing that I went directly to the dan and said, I'm out of the English department. I can't take that. I can't listen to Macbeth being talked about that way. Why because they were just talking

about it as an intellectual exercise. It's meant to be on the same okay. So I said, you know, I think I'd probably go into politics because I didn't think you acted well listen listening for me, I thought, this is UK, this is too whiskey. I need to go to law school. I was going to go to law

school and get a real job. But eventually when you left the English department, because when you were offended by the intellectualization to Macbeth, but then you're going to be you law school, Well, I thought I'd go into politics, and so I got out of college, and then I was hanging around. I was just standing Fava Gardner and some stuff on tour. You know, they had to do long shots for some movies to just make it with the card game all. I was just hanging around after college.

I didn't quite know what I wanted to do. When I was working in this. When I was a kid in that community theater, the woman who ran it saw that I had a gift, obviously, so I was playing leading roles all the time I was a kid. By the time I was fifteen, I was a perfectly professional actor. Anyway, I decided to go to law school. So I went to be You. Because Harvard didn't take women, and there were two women and like two hundred and ninety nine men. The other woman was the wife of one of the men.

You went to lockobas for drink, you had to sit in the back steps because they wouldn't let you in the bar because you were a female. The next year, Harvard took women, and of course took me in the first year. Again, they wouldn't take me in the second year, even though I'd finished year. Laws transfer your year. What kind of world is this? And I didn't like competing against men all the time. I just found that I loved men, and I just didn't want to compete against

them all that. I thought, if I go into this profession, I'll just be the loneliest person in the world. Which the women that I knew in the profession were, you know, a generation before or after me? When did you? I mean, I'm assuming at one point you moved to New York. I didn't really move to New York. No. A friend of my family had driven up in a Cadillac that broke down, so they had to go back on the train.

And so the friend called on my mother and Saystella isn't doing anything, and she drive their Cadillac back to New York for them. So I said sure, So my mother and I got in the Cadillac and drove to New York and I stayed with some girls from college who had moved down here just for a couple of days, and I went to see my roommates. Sister had married a guy who was at NBC, so I went over to say hello to him, and he said, Hey, you know they're hiring people from warning television. Why didn't you

go and see this guy more Warner. He's coming from California, he's from radio, going to start morning television. There's no morning television, which because there wasn't there was nighttime television. Nobody in nighttime television wanted to go in morning television because nobody thought anybody would watch it in the morning. So I went to see this guy, said yeah, well send me yours CV or. I didn't know what it was. So I'm back to Marblehead with my mom and I

wrote up my life story. I thought that was what he wanted, so I sent him my life story and he calls me up and says, you're hired. So I said to my father, you know, I'm going to New York, probably be gone six months. I mean, nobody's going to watch TV in the morning. So well, he said, we Parsons don't leave home, you know. So I said, okay, I'll just be gone six months and I'll be back, which I thought I would. And I was with NBC for five years. Five years. Yeah, I was the first

woman to do political reporting for a network. Did you do cover conventions? Were you covered Marilyn Monroe? I covered conventions. I went on the road with Keith Fover when he ran for president. Yeah. I had all kinds of good one was this, this was and then I got married and then I had twins. And then Jerry Greensid was sending you to the Grace Kelly wedding in Monico, and I said, you know what, Jerry, I don't want to go. And it was the you know, everybody wanted to be

the person that was sent to Monica. I don't want to go. He looked to be an elect president. I think I'm going to move on. Really, that's when you knew. And my husband said, why didn't you go on the stage. You're always talking about it. So I said okay. And his friend Dave Burrows was gonna do happy hunting with Ethel Mormons, so I went and sang for Ay Burrows that he hired me nineteen fifty six, and I've been on the stage of a since. And let me ask you.

You make your debut, I would imagine as the way to put it in nineteen fifty six, Happy Hunting, And you don't make a movie until nineteen sixty three, which is Ladybug, Ladybug, seven years after you start acting. And in that seven years until sixty three, you do a bunch of shows. I was on tour with Carol Channing with the Millionaires, and it was Frank Perry, whom I knew from the Actor's Studio. Along the way there, I

became a member of the Actor's studio. Year did you go to the Did you first go to the studio? It was in the fifties. I heard about it, and I asked a woman who was working with me on the Today, So I said, hey, I want our audition for this place. I read about it in the Times and how all the actors were there and everything. It sounded like a good place to be. So I had a seen from our town, you know, Emily, And I asked a person who wasn't even an actress, who was

working on the show Today's show with me. Come from California, with She was a writer or something. I don't know what she was, but anyway, said just take this and read it. I'm going to go audition for the studio. Can you believe how dumb and naive. It's hard to believe how dumb and naive one is when one as young as me. So I go into Kauzanne and Bobby Lewis, who started the studio with this person who's not an actor, and I'd do my little acting about Emily in our town.

And Kazanne said, you know, Lee Strasburg has acting classes, and he said, I think you ought to go over and see Lee Strasbourg. So I did, and I made an appointment and I got there and he came out and there was a chair in the hall. I was sitting there and he said why didn't want to be an actor? And I started crying, and I cried for about five minutes. But you see, everything going on with me was purely subconscious. I didn't have any conscious drive to do anything. I was just living my life. I

thought that's what life was about. You just kind of live it and nobody cared what I did. So I didn't know you was supposed to do this supposed to do that or whatever other people do. Now, what I'm curious about is that was Strasburg, someone who when you met him and you first started working with him, were you impressed by his gifts as a teacher right away? I know one thing, I never wanted to study acting with anybody ever. You know, there were all these places

people were going to study acting. I didn't nobody had anything to teach me. I still feel that way. Nobody had anything to teach me at all. I knew all about it. I'd been doing it since I was seven. What is it that you get up there? You have something to do lines? Yeah, you have to remember your lines and say them loud enough for our five hundred people to hear it. And that's the job. What's the

big deal about acting? Right? Everybody was in there, George Bippard and the Wenttonio and all these people went on to do things, and Marilyn Monroe by the way, later on. But anyway, the private classes were great. This is before I got into the studio. You see, That's why Kazan had sent me there to do those classes and then get into the studio. But you see, what he created was a space where he had to really give your all. You see, it was not good. It was not get

up and be good. It was not get up and do what you remember. It was get up and be great. At least that was my impression of it, because I'd gone to all these other classes in and I couldn't stand it. But with him, it was just a space where you had to get up and the stakes were so high. You just had to be great. You had

to aim at greatness. Estelle Park, If you're enjoying this conversation, don't keep it to yourself, tell a friend and follow Here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Astell Parsons shares how living out of the trunk of her car with her children led to her winning an oscar. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the thing. Actors Studio

co Associate artistic Director. Astell Parsons has a deep relationship with the theater, including numerous roles on and off Broadway. I wanted to know if earning an oscar so early. For her second film, Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde in nineteen sixty seven sparked a desire for more work in cinema. I have no interest. That's why I didn't do any before that, because they had no interest. I had lots of opportunity to do films and TV, but I didn't want to. I wanted to work in the theater, but

then I wanted to work for Arthur. So I didn't care where Arthur was or what he was doing. But I wasn't going to do that. Because he said. We were working at the Berkshire Drama Festival and he said, I've got a movie i'd like you to read, and I said, I don't do movies. And he said, well, I'd like you to read it. And I said, okay, I'll read it. But I'm telling you I'm going to San Francisco. I've left New York. I've got my kids with me. I'm joining a company out there that John

Hancock has started. So I'm making a whole new life in San Francisco. So I'm not going to do your movie because I'm going to be in a rep company. So all they've ever wanted to do in my life is being a rep company. So that's where I'm going. She said, Well, read it. So I started reading, Oh, for God's sake, it's a madel In Sherwood part. Why am I bothering to read this thing? And then as it went on, I thought, Jesus, this is a really

interesting thing. But I was on my way to San Francisco and my kids and the dog and the whole thing. Then I get a call from John Hancock that the money fell apart and we weren't going to San Francisco. I had already sublet my apartment in New York. I was living out of a trunk with my two kids. So I called Arthur and said, I can do your movie.

So I went to the library because I had months to sit around and do nothing, waiting for this movie and rearranging my life because my rep company dream fell apart, and I knew more about Bonnie and Clyde and everything they did in their lives and any other person on earth. By the time I got to that to make that movie, I just knew everything. Who was The first project you directed was a stage play. The first play I really

directed Huzanne and Cleopatra. And the reason I directed it was that there was this thing called the Women's Into Art theater, and she said, I want you to do something. I said, okay, And I had prepared Cleopatra and Media and Lady Macbeth. I had prepared those at the studios. So I was prepared to play those parts. But I didn't know a director who would you know, like work for ten cents where the theater was located. So she kept saying, well, you do whatever you want to do here,

you do it. And then you know who says that to an actor? Do what you want to do. Somebody thought, oh gosh. I said, well, I'm going to direct it myself because I can't get anybody directed. And the Shakespeare Quarterly called it the best Shakespeare since Oh Rapturous. If you would read the Shakespeare Quarterly what Arthur Holmberg said about me in that production and how it looked at it was going to be so terrible and it was really so wonderful, And where did I get the courage

to do that kind of work? And always things, you know. But then we adopted a boy and I went off to I was over in Ireland and I got a call in a sauna somewhere on the Dingle Peninsula, and I got a call from Joe pavsing, I'd like you to start a Shakespeare company for me, a multicultural Shakespeare, just the kind of work you didn't Annie and Kleopatra. So I said, okay, And when we got back, I had a Shakespeare company for him for two years and eighty six you direct as you like it and Scottish

Play and Romeo and Juliet. I knew the director of all three. Yeah. That was a theater company. Yeah, that was my Shakespeare New York Shakespeare Festival Players. We played for the entire school system. I did Scottish Play and it was this really, really incredible learning experience. There were two times in my life, one in the theater and one in the movies. I said I'm going to put myself in the hands of the director. And we did Scottish Play, and I just said to myself, I'm gonna

do whatever George asks me to do. I'm going to find a way to make that work, even if I don't agree with him. I'm going to stuff down my feelings and try to find a way to address what he's saying. I did that in a film as well, and I was so fucking miserable both times because when we did Scottish, but I love George. George was very sick at the time, he was about to get a kidney trans George c Wolf. Oh yeah, George was running in the public then, and then he directed the play.

I did the play with Angela Bassett and Leef Schreiber. Remember there was one scene where I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I wanted to do, and I didn't have that much experience with Shakespeare. I really didn't. But I knew what I wanted to do, and he wouldn't let me. He really really. We just clashed and clashed and clashed. But I learned you got to make me understand. You gotta make me understand. I'm begging you make me you want me to do what

and why? You know? Now, when you won an Academy Award, did that change your filming about making movies? Did you sit there and go, hey, this is nice. Your second film only your second film? Well, the first film was half an afternoon shoot, so I didn't really count that as a film. Lady Buck, Lady Buck, Yeah, okay, so your first full film and you wanted Body and Clyde and there was my first film because I didn't want to do film, so there was also my last film.

But after that, I did do a few more. I don't know how many, but a few only because I did one because it was the first black man to do a movie in Hollywood. As don't do it, don't do it. Tis that I'm doing it. He wanted me to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to help him out, Melvin Van Peebles. I did that, and then I did two or three others because I wanted to put my kids through college. The winning didn't

motivate you. I kept my mouth shut because I know how important it is to people wanted movie careers, but I just didn't want one. Sorry, sorry, I just didn't want it. I had no use for in that, for my life, for me in that life. And not only that, I hated it because you know, it'd go out of the house and there'd be people standing on the sidewalk out of my house to waiting for me. I can't have a life like this. Yeah, I mean other people can have a life like this. They want a life

like this, fine, let them have it. I can't have a life like this. I got to be able to go through life. You know, as a person, I've got to be able to have my life. I can't do this success thing. What's the less thing you saw in the theater that you enjoyed, that you liked well? Of course, Adrian's play is on and I love Adrian. I commissioned a play from her. When I run the studio. What's the play? Ohio State Murders that's running now? Yeah? What

keeps you connected to the studio? Oh, I'm doing wonderful stuff at the studio because I can do anything I want there. I've always been able to do. It's an empty pace. Come on, what do you want to do? Well? I have things I want to do, and I get up and do them. I have directed so many things there. I have a devised piece that I'm sending all over. I have two one man shows, one with an Hispanic

actor and one with a black actor. For years they are going around the country and even around the world with their one man shows about growing up, you know, in the ghetto and so on, or coming from Dominican Republican stuff. I have those shows out. I have three or four other shows out. I'm selling here and not selling, but you know, not a lot of money changes hands, but I don't really have an interest in money. So can I come carry a spear for you in one

of your productions? Can I have some lunch out? Don't ask that because I'm liable to call you right out this afternoon. You should my thanks to Estelle Parsons and Ellen Burston. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York, York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingwich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.