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Suzanne Farrell
Ballerina Extraordinaire
Suzanne Farrell: My feelings started to change when I realized that dancing was getting inside my body, emotionally, as well as physically. And that it was taking on a whole new dimension, and my life was changing, and I had a performance where I got on stage with an orchestra. At the dress rehearsal, there was no one in the audience, but I suddenly was in the real atmosphere of the theater. I looked out at these empty seats. But I felt all this sort of dust, or feelings of people who had been there before. It was palpable. And I just thought, this is what I want to be. And I knew that dancing would be my chosen profession. View Interview with Suzanne Farrell View Biography of Suzanne Farrell View Profile of Suzanne Farrell View Photo Gallery of Suzanne Farrell
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Suzanne Farrell
Ballerina Extraordinaire
When you get on stage, you can be anything. You are removed from reality in a way, the real world. And yet I think that when you are a performer -- and for me, a dancer -- is when, to me, that is more real. It is not fantasy. It's a certain amount of pretending, and your hard work and your training and your professionalism. But it's more real, because I have spent my life in the theater and on stage, and in the classroom. Far from feeling that it is not the real world, I feel that I see the real world more realistically because I see it clearer when I am dancing. View Interview with Suzanne Farrell View Biography of Suzanne Farrell View Profile of Suzanne Farrell View Photo Gallery of Suzanne Farrell
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Sally Field
Two Oscars for Best Actress
When you learn to do it, if you study and you have a lot of techniques, you learn to step in someone else's shoes. Part of those shoes are created by history. You do research on who this person, if they existed or not, might have been. You use the text of the writer who has written it. You use the text itself, and all of the information that the writer has given you. But you really instill it with your own life. You find parts of yourself that actually link with that human being, even though there may be so on the page you could... I mean, how am I going to do this? There's no way I can relate to this person. And it transforms you as a person to stand in those shoes, because you realize how you are linked to everyone, profoundly, deeply, emotionally linked. And I have been changed by the strong roles I've gotten to play, of Norma Rae or Sybil and others, and I go away not the same. And it has made me wonder, "Was John Wayne John Wayne before he played those roles?" Or did Red River change John Wayne and help him to develop to be the person that he became as a human being? I think it has to go hand-in-hand. View Interview with Sally Field View Biography of Sally Field View Profile of Sally Field View Photo Gallery of Sally Field
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Sally Field
Two Oscars for Best Actress
Sally Field: Sybil had something that was a personality disorder. At that time it was called "multiple personality" and now it's called something else, which is a very real thing but not called multiple personality. I wish I could remember exactly what it's called, and it's not schizophrenia. But Sybil -- I think if you work in the arts, especially if you're in the performing arts, especially if you're an actor -- I understood the illness so much, because I have those voices in those parts of myself that contain certain colors. There's certain characters I've even given names as a child, that could be the strong one, or could be the sexy one or could be the shy one. And we, as human beings, accept that. I mean we don't name them, and we don't tell anyone that we feel that when we deal with our teachers we deal with somebody, and when we deal with our friends we deal with somebody. But I felt it very distinctly. So I really understood that particular mental illness, and subsequently have played other people with mental illness, and have felt very connected to it. I mean, thank God I can get out of it and go home, to an extent, but understand that there is this link between creativity and madness, and I have walked on that delicate line. I really understand that in the brain there is a place that, that madness and creativity sort of go like this with each other and have read about it. Later on, when I played someone who had bipolarism, I have great regard for people with mental illness and dealing with it. I am so lucky that I can flirt with it and come home. View Interview with Sally Field View Biography of Sally Field View Profile of Sally Field View Photo Gallery of Sally Field
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Judah Folkman
Cancer Research
When you operate on cancer, it was different than any other thing. It never stopped bleeding. You could operate on a kidney, a liver, or do any other surgery, and if you lost blood, the organ would stop bleeding. It would turn white. All of the vessels would clamp down and the anesthetist would say, "Stop, we've got to give a transfusion." But in a tumor it would never bleed, and if they could just keep bleeding and bleeding, and there was massive bleeding, and you would use up pints of blood, and all surgeons know that. I knew there was something different about these blood vessels. And the pathologists who were criticizing for example, had never seen the blood, because once we hand them the tumor, it's white, and so to them it's bloodless. And the oncologists, a further step away, had never come to the operating room, so they were looking at x-rays. And the basic scientist has only seen cancer in a dish. And it began to dawn on me that they were missing something, and I said, "These people are wrong." View Interview with Judah Folkman View Biography of Judah Folkman View Profile of Judah Folkman View Photo Gallery of Judah Folkman
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