I couldn’t always live up to her image of what I should be because I liked to curse and drink and smoke. My mother kept trying to teach me to be gentle and forgiving, mildly disapproving but never outright harsh. I think that’s what audiences relate about in me. If you don’t, then it becomes everything you hate as an actress: about being cast in a bad role that has no real downsides or weaknesses.” I want my audience to relate to the moments when we’re not the hero - when we think we’re cowards. I thought, “You have to include your divorce, your mom’s Alzheimer’s, the deaths in the family. Marcia Gay Harden: I wanted you to laugh but also to cry. Jeanne Wolf: It took strength for you to write about your mother as she weakens and also to share your own joys and struggles. In it, Harden reveals the agony of watching her beloved mother, Beverly, suffer with Alzheimer’s. The Seasons of My Mother: A Memoir of Love, Family, and Flowers, is bold, funny, and sensitive. Marcia Gay’s own nurturing and outspoken personality are now exposed off the stage and screen, in her first book. Leanne can be a nurturing mother and still be as strong as she needs to be.” It’s more fun to play someone who is slightly unsafe.
“They’re exploring a softer side of me, but I don’t really want her to become safe.
