Kathy Bates Breaks Down Her Career, from 'Titanic' to 'American Horror Story' | Vanity Fair

table and Sam Mendes, magnificent director, so excited that I had met him in this hotel and I kept wondering if it was my part, I really mean, yeah, you couldn't understand that we were in New York rehearsing and I said who plays my son, this is this guy who is psychotic, you know, crazy, they said this guy named Michael Shannon and he said you. I want to see his audition tape and we all said, yeah, yeah, we want to see it. We sat on the couch and he marked this tape. We were like, "Oh, this guy and from behind me, Kate said something like, 'Okay, we're all going to have to work a lot harder.'" The other thing I loved about meeting Michael and working with him, another kind of actor Very different in terms of his approach, it was seeing how Leo had come into his own as an actor and there was one scene where he was really attacking us and he filled the whole room with his anger and I thought, wow, seeing an actor. going from an innocent little boy to this powerful man, this powerful actor was just amazing and I was so excited for him and to be able to be there to witness it and work with Kate and film in Connecticut and it was wonderful, it was one of those special moments in my life.

career

that I will always come back to, you know.

They're just a handful of the ones you feel and I don't want to slander anyone else. I've had half a century of a wonderful

career

, but there are a handful of films that, if you're lucky, are the ones that. you feel. what I'm most proud of in 2012, I was doing a TV show called Harry slaw and we got cancelled, that was a real gut punch and I wasn't in good physical shape. I got carried away. I had been in an unhappy relationship and I just didn't. I didn't care anymore, so it was an emotionally difficult time for me.

I had been suffering from pain in my abdomen and had had ovarian cancer in 2003 so I was always worried that maybe that would come back and I had a scan and found out that I had breast cancer. I developed lymphedema right away, which means you don't have enough lymph nodes in the affected limb and lymph fluid can pool in your arms, so it was really bad timing and recovering from surgery was bad. I just don't think I would work again. I just thought this is it. I'm tired, exhausted, fed up with everything, I was angry, angry at everyone, I didn't even know where to go to get treatment. and one of my surgeons looked up and found a woman named dr.

Emily Iker and I went to her and told her this sad

story

and she is a very small, lovely Czechoslovakian woman and she said in this accent I'll try wrong, she said darling, that's all in the past, now you'll have a glass of champagne and you would start the rest of your life and she had that thing that some doctors had, which is just her vibe is healing and I felt like all that negativity just went away so I didn't meet with Ryan Murphy and in that way meeting him is like that little kid that I talked about before, suddenly the little boy woke up, the one who had been hit in the head with the cancellation and the cancer, he just jumped inside and ran around the room and I got so excited and and that was the beginning of the coven that was Madame LaLaurie and she was a real person, so I loved studying her and at the time I didn't know what the premise of the

story

was, I didn't know they were going to be something like that. like a rep company and you have to play different roles each season.

I got to work with Gabby Sidibe and Jessica and Sarah Paulson and Franny Conroy and just these amazing girls and then I felt guilty the next season and the season after that and Ryan really. I took my career into my third act strongly, so I owe him a lot. I really will. I always will and I will also regret my days of life. I was so nervous at the Emmys when I won that I didn't thank him. about the team, you know, thank you all so much, I just forgot to thank Ryan and he was very upset and he was right to be angry and he's over it now, but I don't know if I ever will, yeah, we're thanking Ryan .

Murphy Thanks Ryan, my son is innocent, mr. President, please clarify, I didn't know much about the 1996 Olympics bombing when I read the script and started researching? I was horrified by what had happened to Richard Jewell, he was made fun of, horrible, horrible headlines, I mean. As an actor, even one line in a review can go straight to my heart and I'll never forget it, but I would never imagine being the subject of these horrible headlines. I sat down with Bobby and did research with her for a long time and recorded her voice and she got very emotional several times.

He's still very raw in it. I can't always choose something that fills me with joy and you know, I think it's going to be this magnificent movie and in many ways. Richard Jewell told Clinton it's been an incredible honor to work with him and he's 89 years old, he's so sexy and he's great to work with, you have a real freedom with him on set and I won the National Board of Review and this is all happening very fast. and I said to Clint, you know, I've been in this business for 50 years, but I finally feel like I've hit the big time.

My goal was to tell people that he was a hero for being able to have that role in something like that. to do for someone, a real person, to change is to hopefully change something in their lives, it's just a gift, you don't get the chance to do that as an actor, everything you do, you want it to be just great and you want it to be the The best you can be, you know, I'm always looking for the best I can do and I guess it's that elusive carrot that dangles in front of all of us as we try to pursue that passion and that goal.