Glami Gossip

Ali McGraw was interviewed by Parade.com about her sudden rise to fame and her new life in New Mexico.



Sidney Lumet the Great
"It's kind of a big wave because every actor dreams of working with Sidney Lumet (director). I knew I was going to be very, very lucky to work with him. He also cast some legendary actors like Alan King, Myrna Loy and Peter Weller. So for someone like me, who had very little experience and no acting school experience, it was really a revelation that every single member of that cast and crew were at the top of their game. That's a luxury. Also, I'm a New Yorker, and I was just crazy about working in New York. While it was a very enormous job living up to the company I kept, it was an education. I loved every single second of it."

Stay Grounded with Fame
"I think I handled it well because I had been working since I was 14, as all real people do. I was doing anything I could to make up the difference of my scholarship money and worked during the summers and vacations and stuff, so I had my feet pretty much grounded in reality."

Waitress, Chambermaid, Assistants..Before "Love Story"
"I think that I was lucky that I was 30 when I did Love Story, which came with this extravagant pop celebrity. I had already done 15 years of what I call 'real' work.' I was a waitress, chambermaid, and a photographer's assistant, so I knew that I was tremendously lucky as a novice actor to have that big hit. It was more or less an astounding piece of luck. But I never drank the Kool-Aid, and that's something I'm very proud of."

Lucky to Be Under Radar
"I think it is absolutely horrendous that there's no privacy now. I think something will soon have to be done to protect people from hacking and blogging and lying and spreading rumors and chasing you down the street. Lives are wrecked that way. I feel very lucky that I was at the tail-end of some ability to control my privacy. After all, I was married to the biggest movie star in the world (Steve McQueen), and when we went to live in Malibu, we were just people who lived there. Nobody was sitting outside of a Starbucks waiting to see if there was something going on. I don't know how people handle it. I think it's tough when you're very young and you maybe fall for the celebrity and being the center of attention."

Advice to Hollywood Newbies
"I think you've got to be incredibly smart and way ahead of the curve. If you want to be watched 24 hours a day in everything you do, you can't turn that around. You can't wake up three years later and say, 'Stop bothering me, I'm a serious actor,' if all you've done is wear certain clothes and show up half-loaded at clubs. You've got to have somebody in your stable saying, 'Let's get some work done here and let me protect you.' And I also think that finishing school is important."

No More Malibu
"Thank God the scene wasn't there when I lived there. I would never have lived there the way it is now. It was real people, very famous film people like Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder and so forth, with private lives and with water you could swim in and with a highway you could get up and down. This is all part of the past. I certainly miss the ocean and I miss the sweetness that was Malibu, but I don't find it so anymore."

Artistic Passion?
"Oh, God, yes, hopelessly! And that's not just in the 'he and she' sense. It influences my music and art and travel choices. I'm very fascinated by tremendously different cultures. My parents were artists and the books and stuff we had around the house were food for the imagination. I spent a great deal of my time in the New York museums and I was an art student. I'm passionate about a lot of esoteric stuff."

Appearing on Oprah Winfrey
"I've done Oprah's show three times now. She's incredibly bright, she knows exactly what is going to make her show work and I'm full of respect for her. It was fun and I enjoyed it. People make so much of that, but I just don't do the 'in the spotlight' stuff. But I'm not living under a rock by a long shot. Because of the success of Love Story, I'm not invisible, especially when I travel. It's just that people are very kind to me and there isn't this kind of hysteria. I'm treated with a different kind of energy."

I Love My Fans
"I have the kindest fans and the energy is so well-wishing and sweet. I wrote a book that was a best-seller and did a yoga video that was a best-seller and that gets a different kind of fan. The fans of the beginning of my career, when it was about who are you marrying or dating, that's one kind of fan, but these are people that seem interested in some of the other experiences of my life that I've shared."

Still Awed by "Love Story"'s Success
"It's stupefying to me. Nothing prepared me for that. It was a tiny little movie written by a man I happened to know when he was at Harvard, we were both students at the same time. I had no idea in the whole world that it would turn out to be what it was. We just had a wonderful time making it and it was curiously moving to me when I read it. I was so puzzled that I had to read it again to figure out why I was moved by it. Especially because certain things made no sense, like the famous line ['Love means never having to say you're sorry'], but for some reason, it moved me. And it really quite amazes me because everywhere that I travel in the world, people have seen it. And I find that amazing. I think it's given me tremendous access and it was an enormous gift and a complete shocker."

Source from Parade