Actress Elizabeth Ashley on InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse

she's remembered for her intense in-your-face characters who seem liberated years before that term was used to describe women she first made her mark in theater and eventually found success in both film and television she thrived on the popular TV series evening shade and during her career she crossed paths with such stars as Vivien Leigh Michael Douglas Nicolas Cage and Robert Redford coming up in our interview she speaks publicly for the first time about her 1977 rape and beating and discusses what it took to survive that difficult ordeal hello i'm ernie manouse on this episode of interviews join us for our conversation with Tony award-winning actress Elizabeth Ashley in your career how have you seen theater change drastically really well yeah I mean I'm I'm very lucky because I came in sort of at the end culmination whatever of what was the most fertile time in American theater and because it was really kind of from the thirties forties you know 50s and into the 60s where the theater had this voice where it actually it still was what the theaters only task in life is because it should be the last bottom line in the sand forum for the Dangerous Ideas it is home to the two heretics and outlaws because which are so necessary to a culture because without the heretics the questioners the outlaws then they say is you only have the status quo and if all you have is the status quo that goes back to that deal in a vacuum it won't can't survive and so it will implode and that's what keeps a culture alive right and the theater the theater was sort of sacred grab because that was where you could go and that which you that which could not be said thought spoke and dreamed of evidence than anyway that's where the that was the theaters job and there was still a bunch of that round and it was a time when new play I mean new plays were done new plays many many many of them in a season and of course I mean due to progress of which I'm not a great fan civilization which I've severe doubts about and economics which I except as a given the theater the Broadway theater I think that's what that's what I was referencing the Broadway theater or the bigs as some people like to think of it it has kind of it's in danger of falling in to the theme park pit I mean now there will always be exceptions to that I mean there's a play like doubt which is as brilliant to play and challenges everything and I mean it's just delicious and wonderful and but when I mean there was always a place for whatever the equivalent of a Mamma Mia was but the theater has not been around for over a thousand years in some form another to be the home to disco particularly retread disco and I think I think that everybody since I've been in it which is I am ancient so I've been there a long time I made my Broadway debut in 1959 so I think I think that there's a whole sort of cycle that I'll bet you that back there with Aristophanes and those guys in the Greeks they've said oh man I mean it's over it nothing's happening yeah there were those frogs but you know come on I mean I'm not sure this is the place reprised so I think that it's going through a kind of dry cycle but I think it always writes itself and there is it always keeps going and I believe I think that's because it's alive there the passion you feel for theater though have you always felt that has that always been part of you when you say the passion and I feel that what do you mean well when I see you talk about it and how into the theater you are oh I'm one of those I'll give you the weather report like it comes with the voice and god it's just a really unfortunate manner is my f bi okay there is that there is passion there because it's my racket I mean it's what I know it's what I do it's the only thing I've ever been able to do upon occasion will and it's the only place I've ever kind of felt I was at home you know what you feel I know how to I know how to do this with the exceptions of course when you start rehearsal I've never started rehearsal in my life rehearsal is sort of like for a woman getting your period in childbirth you forget that you've done it many times before if something gets an automatic you get lobotomized some written rehearsal is like that because always the first couple of days of rehearsal I think I must know how to do it don't remember I don't know what to do and it happened it's one of those things that actors like to think is their deep dark secret but it happens to everybody so there's that but it overall it's the only place I've ever felt like I kind of knew what I was doing really well when you talk about not knowing and that that moment in rehearsal but you're out and you talk to students and you're educating a whole new generation of actors what are you teaching them then is it something that's just in a drive oh you know you don't have a good I'm corrupting the minds hearts and souls of young with any luck I'm getting them to question absolutely every assumption in life no I mean I'm i well guess I probably am so what am i teaching them right I think you'd probably have to ask them what do you go in though what's your goal what are you trying to impart on them to be dangerous to take risks to question that the theater is the forum of Dangerous Ideas and its task is to illuminate the human condition for better and worse because one does not exist without the other is to be in other words to make them understand that yes everybody grows up you know wanting to be the Super Bowl quarterback and a movie star right because those are those are iconic images in our culture but and and unfortunately many many people think the only reason the newest the anybody that's in the theater it's because they can't get a job in movies or TV which unfortunately as much of the time true however not always and I sort of think of myself as a specialist god knows I mean I I did a lot of film I was never a very good film actress I mean I I was never as comfortable or creative in it and I'm not sure that it is as creative a medium but she chose not to take was a barefoot in the park to the screen yeah but I mean I was really young then that way yeah yeah I mean it's not like they weren't knocking down my door there was one faction of the studio that really really wanted me but how Wallis who is like the big big huge producer at Paramount really really wanted Jane Fonda was a much harder sort of actress than I was and it got into where all these sort of political games that won the first times I was ever exposed to that you know where oh well we want you to show up this restaurant where that guy is the season one of our and I am on occasion at my best pretty good at the job you know the tote that barge lift that bale part when it comes to the the politics of career or any of that you are looking at the worst in the world I mean I have I it's not that I was not when I was young willing to give it a try I was just really never any good at that a damming that the take meeting talk deal give phone to lunch the worst I mean I think my sense of humor is my defense mechanism and I'll try to act you know like up like a regular actors and you know and I'll take a vow that I'll sit there do that and so it's always like the emperor's new clothes to me I mean the first thing in any situation in life I see when everybody sees the Emperor and all that means government's I see is we would say this out the naked man and I think that's pretty funny I'll try so hard cannot say it but I mean I want we were to stop buys everything and that's off-putting but does the work win in the end in the end being a quality actor is that gonna pay off or do you have to play oh well yeah sure I think yeah sure I mean it's look it's it's luck its timing it's it's it's circumstances situations it's a throw of the dice you know but none of that is really in your control all you can do is the work and that's the part I like I'm kind of thinking myself as a mechanic I mean the part the part of that acting that I really like is that getting under the hood of the car it's like it's like being a private eye I mean just part of everyone wants to grow up to be Nancy Drew yeah but I love the detective work I love the research I love the figuring it out I like that I like being the emotional spiritual psychological detective I like going through the script and parsing it I love the discovery you know how all those lawyer shows on TV you know and so in court TV everything we've learned about discovery right well discovery is my specialty know any bears with with great price particularly and great writers there's always something to be discovered because the writer has written it down consciously right but it's all everything's being fed by our subliminal subconscious life I mean consciousness is only the tip of the iceberg yeah let me find some light of its under there there's talk of and when I read about you there's this period of time where you stepped out of show business yeah that's from 65 to 70 and I retired twice okay I see a bunch of excuses or reasons or explanations as to why excuses what was why I knew what I said that word you're gonna joke why do I need an excuse let me tell you the deal I don't get okay is okay I know that it is very popular cultural habit to think of anyone that becomes even a moderately famous actor or actual read at any time and I'm not I'm not accusing you of this but that you we all know that in commercial television and all of the sort of commercialized backstage show rackets stuff there's this there's this this thing of well I mean you're you're like somebody that was standing the deli and bought the lottery ticket and you want it could have been anybody else but you were just lucky all right let me tell you something to be an actress is to work like a dog sweat like a horse and fun occasion crawl like a snake it is not easy it is the labor of it is very very hard work I mean it's not limo Learjet caviar and cocaine it is I mean I know that it's more fun for the media whoever they may be to think of it that way but it really isn't you I mean the loot there's a lot of labor I'm not saying the rest doesn't go on but there's a labor there's a lot of hard labor and who says where is it written that because you do something right I mean I've never been late for work I've never slept on the job I've always given 800% you know and the Oliv ever ask of anyone is that they work maybe a third as hard as I do said she with great humility but that's when I'm on the job because I'm a work ethic kind of person but that means that there's an awful lot of life you don't do because being an artist it's a conscious decision to leave the regular world it's not a nine-to-five job there is no democracy in art nor should there be you have no entitlements you have very few rights you know you have chosen to live outside the line okay so and it consumes you I mean you don't have a lot of downtown because you can't turn off your mind your heart your imagination any of that so where is it written that you don't get to just leave just leave and go I always wanted to be an adventurous so I went adventuring meeple the first time I'd never really had a father and I met this movie star who was the it was 14 years older than me was the oldest whitest guy I'd ever met who was really an authoritarian figure and wasn't like anybody I'd ever known and and he went right he jumped right into that daddy box and I mean I mean big mistake maybe but on the other hand I got my glorious son and I did manage to learn I mean because I mean it's interesting to be a movie stars wife held hostage in Beverly Hills I mean it's like it's like being the furniture you know I mean it's a kind of interesting thing and it's an interesting perspective you learn a lot of things that actors probably shouldn't know when you see it that much from the inside out but walking away were you ever scared that you wouldn't be able to come back that your time would have then passed or don't you think well my time sort of was passed but she came back well I came back because I was a because well because I got divorced and wouldn't take alimony and had to go to work right but I had to sort of start all over but the look I have been told incessantly and forever well not anymore certainly but the UM oh my viable years you know in career you know that this is no way to run a career and you know what they were right it wasn't because to establish a I mean even if I've been a good film actress I mean I was sort of ok but I wasn't great and it was due but to establish that kind of career you only have about a five year window to establish it you know and after that you said like when I was thirty years old and got divorced right I was 30 but got divorced and I went back to my old agent right and said you know I'm I really I'm gonna have to work it go to work again you know and he said listen this is verbatim listen he said I couldn't get you a guest shot on bonanza he said you better rethink this of course did he said you're on the OTB list and I said what would that make Oh tired broad I was learning mmm and now now it was I mean centuries ago that I was 30 so when I say that times have changed now I but I would never say that times have not changed but since then there's been the women's movement so they know better than to say it that way mm-hmm but so let me thank God I was a stage actress and and I mean that was one of great strokes of luck because I mean I started when I had to go to work again a man was doing really good I mean if it were not from Michael Kahn we're not for to see what'll having turned down the offer to do that great production of cattle not en route with Tennessee and like that and Michael Kahn coming to me I would probably be with any luck a second-rate television actress today I don't know yeah I don't know because I could you do when you don't do it for a while when you retire the thing that you lose is confidence and all your chops are in your confidence and so you you tend to regress to a kind of timidity the left again right have I answered Amy if you have you have and what that leads me to is in the late 70s you had a very traumatic personal experience and I'm wondering how do you build out of that which one are you talking and there was the rape how do you get your yeah if it in SPAC after something like that how confident well confidence for me was it was I was gonna I was going to be glib and say confidence wasn't the problem I think everything is the problem but you got understand that was very God that was an experience that nobody's ever happy okay what went through my head was I think the kind of process I have is as an actress that's a moment to moment breathe your way through it you know I knew that the point was to not get killed okay that's what I knew the point was cuz it was I mean mine was it was it was strangers you know and and and like that but I I never discussed it the only reason I ever ever discussed it was many years later a friend of mine in Nashville was assaulted in her own bed in her own house you know somebody came in and and it was his trial and at that particular time in that particular place they weren't taking all of that very seriously and so Emmylou Harris who is also a friend and and several other women and I decided the judge what did a statement from and so so that that's that's the first time that I had ever ever ever discussed it publicly because I'm very very aunt I tell you I'm anti victim I never want to be a victim I think it's a terrible trap to see yourself as a victim and to let things victimize you because we have this whole institutional apparatus that immediately knows how to deal with victims and so you get cast in that part in your own mind and rabbits the first thing that went through my mind after I realized I was alive because I was I was driving my car from Los Angeles to San Francisco and I had been out of the country sailing get me out of civilization and I didn't know about self-serve gas and I was you know late at night trying to read the thing which wasn't smart I mean I know better than that but so I mean it was that but I but after I was back in my car like you know a beat-up I was I was beat up but thank God I was able to you know driving like but the thing that went through my head and this is perhaps emblematic of the time it was because women didn't tell you didn't you didn't you didn't you didn't it wasn't you just didn't say it you just didn't say it and this is irrational perhaps but the thing that went through my mind was I will get through this I will get through this by myself I will not give them this on me now I don't one can theorize much about who that them is I think perhaps it is the the the world of a certain kind of male which at that particular time it would was not taken seriously and I being a somewhat lippy insurgent woman had perhaps insulted certain Fragger factions mm-hm and I think that I think that that is perhaps just it has no meaning other than it's emblematic of the time how long did it take you though to get back to being you do you ever recover fully really me or to seem like me really you because I seemed like me in two days you know really me it changes you forever it but I tell you I had it thank again the skills that I learned as an actress helped me enormously I don't mean the acting part I mean the the scraping the plaque off the way you think and off the way you feel and really examining yourself was - I'd seen so many women that it had happened - it's a very common thing one way or another and it made them bitter and it made them afraid and yet it was always an open wound and I relentlessly examined myself the so - to clean myself of that it was not going it would stain me but it would not twist me okay so in some sense I became the main thing it was not going to do is make me afraid because I've only been able to live my life the way I have lived it by being reckless careless - you know caution to the winds kind of thing I mean walking away from a big-time showbiz career twice God they can't imagine it if I were afraid I would never have run any risks and I think I must have been very very very frightened as a very very young child and I guess I can't it fear is the worst enemy on earth and so quite often I did really stupid reckless unwise things just because I was afraid of them mm-hmm does that make any sense oh yeah and maybe that's not the worst reason to do really stupid dangerous reckless stuff just simply because you're afraid of it something is gained if you learn to not be afraid I mean I'm not talking about put your hand in the fire I don't think okay people will kill me if I don't ask something about evening shade Oh she was even evening shavers the best damn job I mean first of all is the only television series I ever did right and you gotta understand me not because I wouldn't ever because it was only one I was ever really kind of asked to do in a serious way at the right now but we would go to big Burt right I mean I've known her forever yes I mean and when I was about 19 Burt was about 23 or 24 in New York and he and and I think Rip Torn and Bruce Dern were sharing an apartment that was the size of these three seats that asleep in shift and Burt was came he was like a stunt guy it's I've know Burt forever and Bern is one of the best people I've ever known in the show records because with Burt what you see is what you get there's no breakdown between private reality and public image and I've often said that Burt is one of those national treasures he had a fancy as a constituency and Burt also is I mean he's not a creature of the system he is one of those completely self-invented people and he's such a smart and talented man and he will do everything to keep you from knowing that except you don't really perform easy one but Burt hand-picked that cast right and so it was if everybody I knew that because we shot that on the lot with Seinfeld and Roseanne and all their and all these people had done a lot of television series and everybody would come over and visit us you know it was great because everybody was sort of on the old MTM lot people would come visit and all these people that what like really went from one series to the night they would say my god you have no you can't imagine I love you because first of all there were no suits on this year right and Burt dealt with all the politics and he was Aussie Davis and Charlie Durning and Michael Jeter and Burt and I mean that the Hal Holbrook the cast of that was astonishing and most of us were old stage I mean we didn't care what color the rug and the dressing room was you know nobody cared about it and there was I mean and it was also a crowd that was not not your 21 year old said so you didn't have a lot of those in a lot of television series because of demographics they have a lot of like really young really really cute people can always tell them apart but they're really cute a lot of late lip you know there's girls that I think spent years thinking they've been hit in the mouth and the domestic abuse must really be a rise because I've been out of the cab didn't like sailing right and they told me no that they were getting shots and puffing up those lips right and I suppose if you just that's okay you know I mean okay but see you'd think they would know not to do it on camera because you know they get late lip you know cuz they'd be like you're watching and there's you know it's because I'm an actor I tend to overanalyze and want to figure things out there's something wrong with the way that person is talking and it's because it's in phantasmal and it's not a cop it's something if they don't know it but they're left slate cuz it's not so you have a lot of 20 or 21 euro loan your lips are not late but we are so out of time sorry I have to thank you and you have to come do this again with us sometime sure I'm sorry oh no thanks it sound like I get right to the point what you did now thank you a pleasure sorry Elizabeth Ashley to order a transcript call eight six six six five two three three seven eight or sudden $6.95 to the address on your screen please include the name of the guests

Channel: HoustonPBS

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Rating: 4.59375 out of 5

Keywords: KUHT, HoustonPBS, InnerVIEWS, with, Ernie, Manouse, Elizabeth, Ashley, actress, film, stage, screen, George, Peppard, James, Farentino, 'Evening, Shade', 'The, Carpetbaggers', 'Windows', 'Coma', broadway, take, her, she's, mine, barefoot, in, the, park, cat, on, hot, tin, roof, treme

Id: ho8D_eeu7Og

Length: 29min 28sec (1768 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2010