I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that don't work out. That's when I've really learned.
Comedy is tragedy plus time.
Comedy is tragedy - plus time.
My childhood was rough, we were poor and my parents were alcoholics, but nobody was mean. I knew I was loved. We were on welfare, but I never felt abandoned or unloved.
When I was in college at UCLA, I took a playwriting course. I was all set to be a writer. But I had to take this acting class as a theater arts major. I had to do this scene in a one-act comedy. I just said this line, and then... this laugh happened. I thought, 'Whoa. This is a really good feeling. What have I been missing?'
In '57, I got a job at the Blue Angel nightclub, and a gentleman named Ken Welch wrote all my material for me. I lived at a place called the Rehearsal Club that was actually the basis for a play called Stage Door.
Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.
I do think there are some great female comics: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph. They're the whole ball of wax.
My grandmother and I would go see movies, and we'd come back to the apartment - we had a one-room apartment in Hollywood - and I would kind of lock myself in this little dressing room area with a cracked mirror on the door and act out what I had just seen.
My favorite is doing the television show, as a variety show, every week. If the show wasn't that great one week, we could always come back and apologize, you know?
I come from Texas, and my grandmother and mother were born in Arkansas.
My grandmother and I followed my mother here, to a house a block north of Hollywood Boulevard but a million miles away from Hollywood, if you know what I mean. We would hang out behind the ropes and look at the movie stars arriving at the premieres.
Well, I don't know how astute I am, but I did want to be a journalist when I was growing up.
I love audiences.
It's not a bad thing to be able to do many things onstage. If you're an entertainer, you should be able to entertain. I'm proud to say that I'm not a one-trick pony.
I prefer doing TV, where it can be different every time.
Edgy is fine - I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination - but what's wrong with a good ol' belly laugh? I miss that.
I was raised going to the movies with my grandmother as a kid. And then I'd come home, and my best friend and I would act out the films that we saw.
I was very entertained by Betty Grable and Judy Garland.
I'm into 'House of Cards.' 'Breaking Bad' - my God, did I binge on that!
