I won the Broadway.com Best Actress award last May for my performance in “33 Variations”

video courtesy of Broadway.com

I did not expect to win. From the very start, when people told me I would win, I appreciated their sentiments but never felt it was a Tony sort of role. Then, once I saw “Mary Stuart” and “God of Carnage” with the four other Tony nominees I felt I truly didn’t deserve to win. Those performances were towering. Truth be known, the entire 5 month experience was the prize for me and I feel so grateful to have had the opportunity to return to Broadway and discover how much I like being on stage and performing night after night.

Friends often asked how I managed to do it over and over eight times a week. While it’s true that staying healthy and getting enough sleep is challenging, the chance to grow and deepen in your role makes it all worthwhile. I was finding new ways to play moments right up to the end. This deepening is something that you don’t get in movie acting. Also, it is a wondrous thing to have your whole life so intensely focused on that one thing-that one 2 hour performance. While I’m glad I don’t have to worry so much about sleep, I miss this focus a lot.

My agent, Joe Machota (who was also my date at the Tonys), gave me all the reviews of the play the last day I was in New York and I had time to quickly read through them all before leaving for Paris. I deliberately avoided reading reviews until it was over and I am glad I did. They reflected such contradictory opinions of the play and of my performance that I would have gotten confused. Some really liked what I did. Some really didn’t like what I did and some were ambivalent.

I find it very useful to read reviews. I always have. I learn from the reviews both the good ones and the bad ones. I learn about the reviewers themselves, about perceptions they have about me as a woman beyond me in the role and I learn how what I do can be perceived by others. This last is especially useful, I think.

In a few weeks, while I am recovering from my up-coming surgery I intend to reread the reviews so that I can better interpret them and decide what’s important to know about my work. I will probably write more about all of this later.

Right now I am in Paris memorizing my French dialogue for the L’Oreal commercial I will be shooting.

See you next time.

I’ve been writing this over the course of today. Here’s how it started:

It was fun having Oprah sitting right next to us-Samantha Mathis, Susan Kellerman and me. Gayle King and her daughter were with Oprah. Both of us were sobbing at the end and I had to pass her tissues. It’s a truly powerful and important play about the war in the Congo and what it has done/is doing to women. This is what Eve Ensler’s organization, V-Day: Until the Violence Stops, is focusing on. In fact, Eve is in east Congo now, at the hospital where Dr. Mugwege receives the raped and brutalized women and sews them up. V-Day has recently broken ground on the ‘village’ we are erecting to house 100 women. There are so many women flooding into the hospital they aren’t able to stay and completely heal, so the village will provide a safe place next to the hospital for further physical and emotional healing. They will receive therapy and learn microentreprenurial skills. Some of the actors in “Ruined” saw Eve when she testified about the Congo in Washington D.C. recently.

Phylicia Rashad’s daughter is in the play, her Broadway debut. She is brilliant-beautiful and talented (as is her mother). She can sing like a dream, too. This is a must see play! Derek McLane, who did sets for “33 Variations” and is nominated for a Tony for them also did “Ruined”-again, brilliantly

I asked Oprah to follow my tweets and she said she would. I follow her. I was the second person she interviewed for her “O” magazine. It was during that interview that I realized I had to write my memoirs. I told Oprah that last night.

Oprah and fabulous actor in “Ruined” Simon Shabantu Kashama

Back stage after “Ruined” with the cast, Samantha, Susan, Oprah, and I am there, behind somewhere.

Samatha, Susan and I had dinner after at Trattoria del Arte and closed the place down.

Don’t we look happy?

I am discombobulated today. Partly because I took a pain pill last night cause my knee hurts so bad. The pill has thrown me for a loop. Went to see “Reasons to Be Pretty” by myself this afternoon. Unfortunately Thomas Sadoski, who was nominated for a Tony, was replaced by his (very good) understudy. I was hoping to see him but I was told his wife fell and cut her head and he was with her in the emergency room. Good priorities. Still, I found the play riveting. Strange. Not easy. But riveting.

I took pictures of people taking pictures of me in front of my Times Square hotel as I waited for my friend, Lisa Birnbach to arrive and pick me up. It’s funny cause normally I go around anonymously. Then I went with Lisa to the Tony cocktail party at which Phyllis Newman was honored. The Phyllis Newman Women’s Health Care Center is one of the beneficiaries of Broadway Cares. I’ve known Phyllis from decades ago. She and Adolph Greene were close friends of my fathers. Zach Grenier (my beloved Beethoven, also a Tony nominee) was there, and Moises Kaufman, our writer/director, and Roger Friedman and Michelle Lee and Lucy Arnez and Oscar Eustis, Director of the Joe Papp Public Theatre and many other friends. It was fun and, once again, I felt embraced by this wonderful Broadway community.

After that, Lisa and I saw “The Norman Conquests: Round and Round the Garden,” the third in the trilogy. I loved it and wished I had seen all three. Scott Peacock and Alice Waters sat right behind us. Scott’s going to be at the Tonys tomorrow. A cheering section.

To end the day we had dinner with Jeff Daniels, his wife Kathleen whom I had not met before and who is smart and lovely as I would have expected and Jeff’s manager and friend, Paul Martino. We’re all looking forward to the swag tomorrow at the Tony rehearsal. It was Jeff who first told me about swag. Jeff and the others in “God of Carnage” have all re-upped for continuing the play in the fall after a 6 week break. I wasn’t sure they would but, clearly, having a good, reliable and fun job to count on till the year’s end is not to be sneezed at-not in these times.

Rehearsal is fairly early so I’m off to bed. I still dream about the play and still feel the Galapagos ship rolling under me. I’ve probably forgotten a lot of stuff from today but too bad. I’m pooped.

See you next time.

Oh me oh my, there have been a lot of last days of late: last day on Broadway, last day in the Galapagos. Now it’s my last day in Atlanta, perhaps till the end of September when I am coming back for a fundraiser and the next board meeting. That may well be happening in the midst of a film.

 Tomorrow I go back to New York where I will catch up on plays I did not get a chance to see while I was on Broadway myself.

Tomorrow night it’ll be “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” then I am taking Samantha Mathis and Susan Kellerman (who were in “33 Variations” with me) to see “Ruined” and Saturday I’m having lunch with a woman who, like me, is very involved with the empowerment of adolescent girls, then I see the matinee of “reasons to be pretty,” then I’m taking my pal the smart, funny author and radio talk show host, Lisa Birnbach, to “The Norman Conquest: Round and Round the Garden,” followed by dinner with Jeff Daniels…it’ll feel like (not so) ol’ times.



The Tonys are Sunday–there’s an early rehearsal which I will have to go to cause I’m presenting the award to Best Featured Actor. I hope I still fit into the Reem Acra dress after all those scrumptious meals on the boat in the Galapagos. I will be tweeting the whole time so stay tuned. Monday after the Tonys I go to Paris to film a commercial for L’Oreal (in English and French–i have stayed fluent in that language). It’s a great company to work for. Imagine a company that has a 71 year old brand ambassador (that’s what we’re called). I am the “face for older women everywhere in the world but the U.S. Diane Keaton does it here. Hopefully the film with her will go in Sept. When it’s 100 percent certain I’ll tell you about it. I’d love to work with her.



Very soon the “store” will be set up on my blog so that those who want to can buy the mug shot totes, clutches, mugs etc that I’m selling to benefit the non-profit, G-CAPP that I founded 15 years ago. (See the side bar for their website).

 All for now. I will finish packing and then to bed. I’m wiped.



Carole holding Tulea to say goodbye. I won’t see T. Again for 2 weeks.

View from my terrace of the beautiful Atlanta skyline.

See you next time.