Quotes from Mariette Hartley

If you are on the right medication... stay on it and don't change. But if it doesn't seem to be working, then go to a doctor and find the right one for you.

It was a joy to do something sensual and sexy. It was exciting. I don't get many of those types of roles.

A lot of people in show business don't know what I'm capable of doing.

What people don't realize is that I've been trying to get to Bethlehem since I was four years old. By that, I mean I've been trying to attain perfection since I was kid. And it took me more than 40 years to learn that it wasn't going to happen.

I don't think anyone thought showbiz people know anything. I would suggest interview subjects, were told they weren't such great ideas, and then they would be assigned to somebody else. I wasn't given anything to do. I felt like the highest-paid dress extra in the world.

I've never done a musical before. I've sung, off and on, all of my life. But I have never, ever done a musical.

My father was a farm boy who never learned to be holding and supportive.

Once we make the commitment to help ourselves, we are able to help others - and the universe supports our commitments.

It's what Kitty Carlisle said in her book: Don't interview people about what they do, interview them about what they love. I want my interviews to come out of the side pockets.

The casting-couch routine has been going on for ages, from top directors to the lowliest agents. I had to attend a meeting where four actresses filed complaints against the same person over his moral conduct. It's not a funny situation.

For me, that is what my mission seems to be in my life on earth - to be awake, to stay awake, and to bring a certain kind of consciousness to the world, and to myself.

Nobody knew I could do comedy until I started Polaroid.

I feel my free-est when I don't know where I'm going, when I'm not scripted, and doing crazy things.

Bipolar disorder is something that is mine. And it is very difficult to talk about it.

It hasn't been easy for me to get roles in movies after so much exposure on television. There's an anathema about TV, and breaking away from it is difficult for almost everybody.

I really don't know how women in television news do the job. It's a very male-oriented business.

There are problems in Canada. There is a certain inconsistency in the acting. I don't mean to sound chauvinistic, but we do have a larger supply of good actors in Hollywood. There are good actors in Canada, but not as wide a choice.

My mother's father was the behavioral psychologist, John B. Watson.

What took some time for me to figure out was how to have a life outside my career, to find a way to be inclusive rather than exclusive. It came only after years of psychotherapy and deep soul-searching.

I'm in the public eye, so I have a responsibility as an actress to my generation. I think that's what acting's all about.

It was a stumbling career at best before the Polaroid commercials. I think they definitely, if there's a word to use, focused - pardon the pun, 'cause I don't mean it that way - my career.

Well, thank God I have this face, and it's a believable face, and that also seems to be my acting style.

Drinking made me a lot more free sexually; the restrictions were off. I was a compulsive, compliant 'good girl' by day and a 'bad girl' at night.

My happiest moments are when I'm on my high wire with the Johnny Carsons of the world. I don't have that opportunity if I'm doing other people's scripts.