My Extraordinary Ordinary Life (20 page)

Sunday school Christmas party. My mother taught all of our Sunday school classes. Her most important lesson: “God is love.” Those are little Bibles hanging on the tree; a circus is painted on the floor.

My brothers and me after a squirrel hunt with some friends in Granger, Texas. I had to be tough to keep up with the boys. But if I couldn’t be tough, at least I had to be quiet.

Me and Robbie just hanging out. When he was a newborn, Robbie looked so deeply into my mother’s eyes that it almost frightened her. He was a soulful boy.

My brothers Ed and Robbie right before I came along.

Robbie was a talented athlete and track star who qualified for the Texas State Meet in Austin. As an eight-year-old he begged my dad to let him out of the car so he could catch a jackrabbit he saw running down the side of the road. My dad laughed, but decided to let him try. Robbie caught the rabbit.

My brothers and I were very close growing up, despite the fact that I was a girl. I tried kissing my elbow for years because my uncle Sam told me that if I did, I’d turn into a boy. That’s me and Robbie in 1953.

Ed and Robbie in 1966 at Arlette and Wade’s home in Austin, Texas, right before the big race that Robbie couldn’t run. The next day Robbie was admitted to MD Anderson Hospital in Houston.

PHOTO SECTION II

After
Carrie
came out I was everywhere—even on the cover of
Newsweek
. A reporter came to Quitman, Texas, to interview my parents. When the article came out, my dad bought up all the magazines in town—if anyone else wanted to read it, they had to come to our house.

Some of the characters that I found inside me. When I was younger I always wanted to play someone my own age; now I’m finally getting to. You’ve got to watch what you wish for.

Jessica Lange, Diane Keaton, and I had a great time being sisters in
Crimes of the Heart
. We shared a house on the set where three-year-old Schuyler gave Diane first aid with her new play doctor kit.

With Jack Lemmon, who played my father-in-law in
Missing
. Jack could be telling a joke, stop, play a dramatic scene, and then finish his joke. He told me to “just act” and forget the “Method.”

I worked with Tommy Lee Jones on
Coal Miner’s Daughter
, and then in 1995 he directed me in
The Good Old Boys
. Here he is telling me all the reasons I shouldn’t be galloping sidesaddle across “Cemetery Field.”