Frances Conroy

'Six Feet Under' was so much about life. Sure, it had a lot to do with death, but that's the fun - that now I became a dead person.

I guess you're happy if you have some kind of balance in you. I'm a human being. I have days when I feel paralyzed, days when I feel like a slug. Then I have days when I have good energy, I've read the newspaper and I've done different things.

Some people ask me, Do they put aging makeup on you? It's just this very nice street makeup.

I can't form a total picture of things. Because I'm not her.

I think the rigors of a TV schedule are brutal and 'Six Feet Under' wasn't a network schedule. We did 13 shows, we didn't do 22. I don't know how people do that. I really don't. I mean the shows are shorter, but wow, it's quite a discipline.

If you choose to be Frankenstein with Botox and plastic surgery, you've bought your own private mask.

It's like real life: We don't get a preview of what's coming up, thank God, and we don't build our own character from what we're going to be informed with in the future.

It's actually meditative to sit in a character for an extended period of time, realizing what your relationship is to who you're playing and then letting go, just being there.

Marriage is an exercise in torture.

As you age naturally, your family shows more and more on your face. If you deny that, you deny your heritage.