Patti Smith

And most of us, within our own family particularly, don't spill the beans.

Or we wait till it's too late and say, oh, I wish I'd asked them this or that.

And what shocked me...

as I would start to engage her in topics is how little I had asked this only child, single mother, who raised me an only child.

And yet, I hadn't asked her

Why did you, from this tiny town in Mississippi, think, I'm going to be an actor.

That's what I want to do.

What was the first movie that inspired you?

Who were the actors you fell in love with?

Given that I became an actor as well, and we worked together, as you mentioned a number of times, wouldn't that be a natural conversation?

It never came up.

Things as seemingly mundane as favorite foods, favorite colors, favorite flowers that were just to pass the time.

It moved me so much how little the people in our most intimate relationships, how little we ask.

And I know her emotionally, but I never asked where those feelings stemmed from.

Yeah.

I want to play a scene you did with your mother in the HBO series Enlightened.

I'm not going to set up the whole story.

I will just say that you had basically a ragey, nervous breakdown at work.

And you go off to rehab in Hawaii where you learn to meditate.

And you return home