भाव

A wonderfully funny letter was sent to me signed by a fraternity in Boston, Massachusetts medical school. The fraternity for doctors had voted me the body on which they would most like to operate.

It was a chance to put my craft to work. Even so, my Jewish friends were appalled that I would appear in such a film. My husband is Jewish and he went nuts when he first read the script. But as an actress I didn't think about that. I was just playing a role. It was a job to me and I did the best I could with it. I never tried to glorify Ilsa. I felt she was a character to pity, rather than to emulate. I wanted to show the truth about her.

If you do too good a job of playing a villain, you will suffer for it. Well-known friends of mine in the industry reprimanded me for it. They said the film would hurt my Hollywood career and that people would hate me personally for playing Ilsa -- and they were right. It caused me to lose a good deal of film work. I could no longer get in to see the major studio casting directors and I couldn't even get an agent to represent me. They were scared to handle me.

There have been so many broken hopes and false promises in my career. But I just keep on keeping on. It's my versatility that has kept me alive -- not necessarily my talent, but my willingness to try anything. I know I've brought pleasure to a certain group of people. If I had been in more conventional Hollywood films, perhaps I would have been lost in the shuffle.

[on the subject of the best and worst aspects of playing Ilsa] Well, we didn't rehearse at all, so that was difficult at times. There was a lot of stress, but it was really cool learning how to shoot a gun. I went to target practice!