good at that. i can evoke memory quite easily. >> rose: ian mckellen, patrick stewart and anjelica huston when we continue. sir ian mckellen and sir patrick stewart are here. the actors were a member of the royal shakespeare company together. they became friends in hollywood. patrick stewart playing professor xavier and ian mckellen plays mag nino the x-men film series. fans of "lord of the rings" know mckellen as gahn dofl. the brits are performing two plays in repertoire at the cort theater on broadway. the plays are samuel beckett's "waiting for godot" and harold pinter's "no-man's-land." i'm pleased to have them here at this table. welcome. >> thank you very much. >> rose: other than these are two great playwrights, two great actors, two friends and the playwrights were friends so all this friendship we'll talk about. how did this come together. whose bright idea was it to do all this? >> >> we'd dondo doe in london and on tour about five years and on the last night in london i now famously collapsed in tears. >> rose: cried. >> not like me at all. i think it was that the audience that particular night had been so receptive to the play and i neurowhy i was an actor, it was to entertain people and i said "i don't think i'll before as happy again." and it was because of our friendship and the success of the production. so when it was rumored that we might do it again-- and we'd always want to bring it to new york-- i was very speedy and said yes. but pat introduced the idea of the other play. >> i saw it in 1975 when it was first formed -- performed be john'll go gud. i saw it three times in one week and i was overwhelmed. >> rose: three times in one week? >> and i would have gone a fourth time but i couldn't afford to buy another ticket. and it was a play is a masterpiece and i made a promise to myself that one day i would be in this play. not even casting myself but i'd always imagined -- because the flashy showy role is born but when ian and i did "waiting for godot" together and shared a dressing room for 22 weeks it became clear to me that harold, unknown to him, had written the rule of spooner for ian and i would settle for sir ralph's role. so the great benefit is the two plays have four male characters and there's a boy in "waiting for godot" and out of that grew with our director we would put the shows together and would use the same cast. >> rose: these two plays, they overshadow this play because they were so -- ralph richardson did he overshadow the play? >> in a sense they did. more for ian than myself and you should speak about it. >> i seem to be i believe to remember every intonation that john gielgud gave every line. and it would be a good way to imitate but i won't do that because you have to view through your own experience to my constant question to sean the director is, is that two'll go guds? and that's how i hear it. so it was a dead play for me. gielgud. so i had to be a persuaded there was another way of doing it. >> rose: what kind of way did you find? >> well, by going in. there's a lot of acting which i was -- i was going say guilty of but i followed in their steps all those years ago where there was much acting that was the facade and british actors are very good about presenting themselves but if you delved into the psyche of the character you might find it slightly wanting. i tried to absolutely understand spooner and the life that you never see him involved in on stage so that when he walks on he's absolutely real all the way through. >> rose: i think someone said about "waiting for godot" is that this is a play in which nothing happens twice. >> it's a nice line and it's not true. a great deal happens in "waiting for godot" almost right away. there is one thing that, of course, doesn't happen and everyone knows what that is. but on the other hand there are an astonishing number of events, incidents, dialogues, conversations, performances, presentations. it never ends in that play. >> rose: talk about the two friendships. one, beckett and pinter. the last play pinter appeared in was beckett's play as an actor. pinter was an actor before he began to write. >> david baron was his name, i think. >> rose: exactly. >> well, he played famously pats part in the show. i saw him do it. a static performance. i much prefer what you did with it. but he was, of course, totally in awe of beckett what he liked about beckett was that he wasn't trying to sell you anything. he wasn't giving you an answer. there was no easy message that you could take away and put on the wall, you know, home sweet home. there was no comfort like that in life. so he would just tell it how it is and that we make up your own mind and that's true about pinter. >> the friendship between two of you, where did it begin? >> >> it began perhaps in a luxurious trailer on the "x-men" set on the fox set. >> rose: it did not! >> yes. >> well, the acquaintance, we were both in the royal shakespeare company at the same time, never in the same productions, always in different productions but saw one another's work ian was a star performer very early when i was still in the regions and i went to london and saw him work and was in awe of what he did. >> rose: so the friendship, you knew each other but didn't have any relationship there. >> if you -- if you're with the royal shakespeare company of the period when we were and that seems around the golden age but perhaps it wasn't, but it felt it at the time. and even if you're not working together you'll know that you're like-minded we were actors approaching middle age who were happy not to think about how much money we were earning but what was the next shakespeare we were going to do. what was the next classic we were going to do? was what was the next play that the r.c. would come up with. would we work with peter hall or trevor nunen? those are the preoccupations. actors having a career but a career of the sort they wanted. now since then we've divulged or got away -- >> there's a parallel to that, too. >> yes, it's virtually rewarded that finally they got what they deserved. >> rose: the question is do you wish you had done that earlier? found that kind of -- the fame and the vehicle? >> absolutely not. no, no. >> rose: you wouldn't have been able to handle it? >> no, i would have lost myself in that kind of success. i was 47 when we started filming "star trek" and it was perfect. in that respect there's little that has happened to me in my career that i would want to change or challenge because i had a plan. when you want to do theater -- ian said this this morning. when you want to do theater you can make a plan for life if you wish. you make specific choices and you know that other choices will be there to be made as you proceed. on television you can't be so confident. >> rose: in theater you can develop the skill and the reputation in theater will that will carry you for a long time? >> and the connections. the relationship with directors. and i thought i am going do do macbeth one day. i turned it down originally because my naivete i didn't realize i was signing away six years of my life and my first reaction was "i have too much to do to do a television series." i don't think ian does but i still have plans. >> rose: and they included, as he suggested, "one day i'll do macbeth." >> absolutely. yes. >> rose: for you as well? >> yes. i've planned my career way back. >> rose: did you really. that you -- you planned the idea that i will find those kinds of film roles that will expand my horizon, give me not only fame but -- >> exactly. >> rose: >> did you think of film, ian? >> well, i hoped at film but i didn't expect it to happen. >> rose: or as big as it happened. >> no, absolutely not. no. no, no. but you're right, the plan was not in specifics but the general principle was that each part should teach me something about acting that i wouldn't know. i was a craftsman. i would have meat the perfect table but not possible. this comes pretty close, i must say. >> rose: (laughs) it's up there. >> yes. so like a carpenter you get better and better and better and age doesn't really come into it except at the experience it brings you. and so to be looking for the moment when you will be discovered or you would play that part which you would be identified the rest of your life, that wasn't envy at all. >> rose: i'm struck by the idea of continuing to learn and giving some seriousness to the question. do you continue to learn and what is it you continue to learn? >> i and he will be better tonight during "no man's land" than we were last night. day by day you learn about the specifics. >> rose: but it's not as simple as the brain changes because of every experience it has. or is it more than that? >> i think a lot of it has to do with the material we're fortunate to work with. we both had a background in shakespeare and other classics and harold pinter is as good as the 20th century gets along with sam beckett. the material also elevates you. it requires that you continue to explore and investigate and understand like shakespeare, you're just taking layers off all the time. >> rose: but the more you learn about life the better able you can pour that into -- >> it's one of the blessings -- if not the only blessing of aging that the bank balance of experience becomes greater and therefore -- i mean, i play a drunk in no-man's-land, a serious drunk. and it's not, luckily -- alcoholism has not been a problem to me but i can look back to periods of my life when i was doing macbeth here in new york when the play was getting to be so much i have drank too much. and i have those recollections each night as i go on. >> and "waiting for godot" is about two old men who have known each other for 50 years. so they're probably, as we are now, in their 70s and it's -- it's the -- you can relate your own old age. my character has bad feet and a little bit of memory loss. his character has a prostate problem. these are established very early on. and they're very, very real. when people say "i don't know what it's about." it's about having a dodgey prostate. it's about having bad feet. >> rose: (laughs) >> it's about coping and waiting for something to relieve you from the misery of the coping. so yes, your life experiences is very relevant. >> rose: this is pinter talking to me about "no man's land in 2007." here it is. >> when i went to see a production of my play "no man's land" with gielgud and richardson i went to the bar in the interval and i found myself in a corner. >> rose: (laughs) >> and there were a man and a woman i couldn't escape. they stood in dead silence for a while and then the man said "oh, well, not as boring as the usual pinter, i suppose." >> rose: (laughs) >> rose: classic. >> pinter in his youth used to write sketches for reviews for people like maggie smith to perform. i did one of them when i was a young actor. and they were short little scenes that were designed simply to make you laugh. and there were elements of that writing that come, don't you think, in "no man's land." he just can't stop himself writing gags and beckett did the same. they both are playing with the idea of theater as a metaphor for life, i think. and of humor. >> of humor being a resource or a refuge that you can go into. in waiting for "waiting for godot" there are different times in the play when we simply laugh at something that has happened to us that we have done and it is an ease. it is a comforter from the ghastly situation. >> rose: here's what michael billington said "no-man's-land is a masterly is summation of the themes that have obsessed pinter. the fallibility of memory, brute strength and sensibility, the notion that all human contact is a battle between who and whom." do you agree with that or would you too old that? >> would what did he say about that? >> the ultimate unknowability of women. meaning you can't know women. >> but there are no women in the play and they're referred to rather disparagingly, aren't they. rather misogynistic. oh, i don't know, it's very difficult to sum him up, isn't it? >> rose: sum up "no man's land"? >> i think it's about optimism versus pessimism. >> rose: do you really? >> oh, yes. my character is absolutely an optimist. he says "i'm a poet therefore i live in the present. and the present is where i want to be." >> rose: but he's a poet, too. >> he's a poet but he's a critic. >> (laughs) >> and he lives in the past. he's caught up in the past. he can't escape it. and my character is constantly trying to nudge him into the present and that's -- that's a theme of the play. >> rose: here's what your director said. on the surface the pointer is all about the search for making order out of everything when it comes to nothing. "waiting for godot" is all about creating chaos. >> oh, that's good. very good, indeed. it may surprise people to hear both of us believe that both plays are ultimately optimistic. >> rose: that's what i thought you'd say. >> but you can't when you're in the play act these summaries of the style. all you can do is come and deliver the character in in its fullness and my friend came to see "waiting for godot" yesterday and she said "well, i laughed and then i thought and then i cried and then play floored me." >> rose: floored me. >> floored her. and she went the first time and lit candle at st. patrick's. she just felt need to -- you know, secure the moment somehow. but we can't take a couple -- >> rose: that's the way you want theater to impact you. >> we do and i want it as an audience but it's not up to us to floor the audience. we can make them laugh. we can perhaps make them think and cry but the flooring is up to the playwright and we're at his behest. >> rose: i want to see both of these plays, one, "waiting for godot." here it is. >> oh, yes! the two thieves. >> you remember the story? shall i tell it to you. >> no. (laughter) it >> it will pass the time. two thieves, crucified at the same time as our savior. >> our what? >> our savior. two thieves. one is supposed to have been saved and the other -- >> saved from what? >> hell! >> i'm going! >> and yet how is it-- this is not boring you, i hope-- (laughter) how is it that of the four evangelists only one speaks of a thief being saved. >> the four were there. >> or thereabouts. and yet only one speaks of a thief being saved. >> come on, go go, return the ball, can't you, once in a way? >> i find this most extraordinarily interesting. >> one out of four. and the other three, two don't mention any thieves at all and the third says that both of them abused him. >> hey, what is all this about, abused? >> the savior. >> why? >> because he wouldn't save them sfrchlt >> from hell? >> from death. >> i thought you said hell. >> from death! from death! >> oh, what of it. >> then the two of them must have been daft. >> why not? >> but one of the four says that one of the two was saved. >> well, they don't agree and that's all there is to it. (laughter) >> rose: here's this moment i just experienced sitting between two of the greatest actors we have today watching themselves and an extraordinary play and laughing as they watched of being amused by words, performance, interchange. >> a little bit horrify of how big our performances are for the screen. not for the theater, hopefully. it is funny, isn't it? when you see it objectively you laugh while people laugh. oh, dear, they're just trying to get through, aren't they? >> rose: here's a clip -- another clip from "no man's land." here it is. >> i looked up once into my mother's face and what i saw there was nothing less than pure malevolence. (laughter) i was fortunate to escape with my life. (laughter) you will want to know how i dealt with such hatred in my own mother. >> you pissed yourself. (laughter) >> quite right. (laughter) how old do you think i was at the time? >> 28. (laughter) >> quite right. (laughter) i left home soon after. (laughter) >> now there you heard gags. they were one-liners that you heard. that's harold the sketch writer putting in a little -- because it doesn't move the play forward very much. but he's writing good jokes. >> rose: he's amusing you. >> yes. >> rose: when you -- do you -- have you two watched the difference of each other as you have grown? i mean, when you first saw him from backstage rather intimidating, wasn't it? >> it was, yes. but in those days i was easily intimidated. (laughter) >> you know, there are some quite famous royal shakespeare company tapes led by john barton called "acting shakespeare." and someone sent me one the other day, a week ago, and i watched it and it was 20 minutes focused exclusively on ian, analyzing the "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech from macbeth. and it -- it could be a play on its own! not only the intellectual application to understanding the speech but taking into account the verse, the rhythm, the meter the imagery all doing what? all moving towards creating a recognizable human being. and sitting -- and what is ironic about this film is over ian's left shoulder there is an out-of-focus very fuzzy patrick stewart and that's exactly how i felt! (laughter) i felt out of focus and fuzzy while i was watching you do that analysis. >> oh, well, that analysis was only what i had been taught at the r.c. >> i heard some of it, too. >> rose: do both of you see somewhere you need to reach to? not to complete but add to this remarkable dual career. some place, some role, some experience, some character. >> only one thing is truly important to me now and it is and endeavor to find the deepest and most meaningful quality of truth in the work that i do and little else interests me and i see that, i hope, as my actor's journey for the rest of my life. >> truth. i'd say i'm most proud that i know how to get a laugh on stage and when i started out i absolutely didn't. it dawned on me obvious fact that you can't be funny unless you're being truthful. you can do something funny, you can copy. but i think i'd like to live more -- i don't bar entertainment from this search. >> well when lear is out of the way" goodness you just have to do it. >> rose: yes, do it! do it! >> he wants to do falstaff, god help him. so i don't have a list of -- long list of things i want to do but it's nice we're allowed to be cheeky on occasion. it stretches you and then when you come back -- >> and you want people to see that side of you, too. >> yes, exactly. because i didn't have much fun for years and years and years. i was too scared, too intimidated, too full of the feeling that everybody else knew better than i did. so fun was just on the fringes of my work. >> that must have been the big change for your, your insecurity is which is now hopefully gone forever except in a good way. in a modest way but you always regret you didn't go to university and think there's something wrong in that. i keep telling you it doesn't matter. it really doesn't matter and what we did at university is probably what you were doing out of university. but now you -- it's lovely to see you in your maturity and wearing a proper suit. (laughter) being what you are. we enjoy things on sthaj are only personal and private to us. i don't mean in jokes or anything, but because we are so close, we can quietly connect about something that has happened or somethat that we've done and the audience know nothing about it. i could not have the done that even 25 years ago. i couldn't have had the ease and relaxation. and i've learned that from him. >> rose: when you do that do you smile inside and say "the two of us know that but no one else" and it adds to the pleasure of the moment? >> yes. and it's part of the play. these are two men of that sort. it wouldn't be appropriate in another play where they're not as close. >> rose: thank you for coming. good to see you again. >> thank you. >> rose: "waiting for godot" and "no man's land" play in repertoire at the cort theater until march, 2014. i suggest you go now. back in a moment. stay with us. anjelica huston is here, she has led an interesting life. she hailed a family of esteemed artists. her mother was a ballerina and actress, her father it was academy award winning director john huston who famously directed her grandfather walter huston in the 1948 film "the treasure of the sierra madre." >> they go searching for gold. after six months one is lucky. one out of a thousand. he represents not only his own labor but that of 999 others to boot. that's 6,000 months, 500 years. going hungry and thirsty. gold is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into it. >> i never thought of it just like that. >> there's no other way, mister. gold itself ain't good for nothing except making jewelry with. gold teeth. you start out, you tell yourself you'll be fine with 5,000. fine resolution. after months you're so dizzy after finding nothing you come down to 15,000, then 10,000. finally you say lord, let me just find $5,000 worth and i'll never ask for anything more. >> $5,000 is a lot of money. >> yeah, here in this joint it seems like a lot but i tell you, to make a real strike not even the threat of miserable death could keep you from trying to ad $10,000 more. then you want to get more. one more turn, always one more. >> it wouldn't be that way with me. i swear it wouldn't. i take only what i set out to get. even if there's still a half million dollars worth lying around waiting to be picked up. >> i've bug dug in alaska, carolina, i was in british honduras where i almost got the fever. california, australia, all over the world, practically. i know what gold does to men's souls. >> rose: anjelica huston is an academy award winning actress and director. here's a look at her work. >> settle down. couple of kids. practice your meat balls. >> sure, charlie. thanks a hell of a lot. you're a big help. i can't go back to the way things were! i was at a low point when i met you! you turned everything around. >> i never said i'd leave miriam. >> well, there's no passion left it's boring. those are your words unless you were lying to me or there's more to this that i don't know. it's got me terribly worried about him. he won't eat. he can't sleep. he keeps coughing up blood. >> he coughs up blood? >> not like he used to. >> listen, i'm not dying. but i need some time. a month or so, okay? i want us to -- >> what's wrong with you? >> you're talking to her. you're talking to someone else. you're not talking to me. i don't see myself this way. i'm sorry you lost your father. we'll never get over it but it's okay. there are greater forces at work it's over, isn't it? >> rose: she tells the story of her early life in her new memoir "a story lately told." i'm pleased to have anjelica huston back at this table. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: how does one decide it's time to write about my life? >> well, grayden carter said to you "when are you going to write about your life?" (laughs) >> rose: grayden knows what interesting lives are all about. >> grayden absolutely does and i was inspired by him at christmas. i got a lot of exercise books for angelica's memoirs written on the front and he sort of made it impossible for me not to. >> rose: couldn't say no? >> i could not say no. >> rose: made you an offer you couldn't refuse. so what do you do now? first you have to decide what the process is, what you're going to cover because you're going to do in the two books. >> i didn't decide then it was going to be in two books. that decision was made for me by my publisher nan graham at scribner. >> rose: so you wrote one long book -- >> i wrote a slew of pages by hand with a number two pencil. >> rose: by hand? no computer for you. >> no computer. >> rose: why not? >> i didn't grow up typing or where a computer. although i like it and like testing to me it's about short hand and something about the brain-to-hand method works for me. >> rose: so what did you do then? >> then i went to work on "smash" and realized that i had absolutely no time to write this book. but the nature of serious television is that you work in intensely hard for three or four days and then you don't work and in the time that i was off i wrote. >> rose: and how would you write? would you go upstairs? would you go down stairs? >> depends where i was. i started off at home mostly on my balcony in venice, california and i walked my dogs in the morning and then i would have a conservative breakfast then i would go upstairs and start writing and before i would know it it would be lunch. then i'd go back to lunch at 5:30 in the afternoon and at 59:30 it would dictate itself to me in a kind of conservative way. >> rose: conservative way? >> yeah. >> rose: meaning? >> meaning it set it own timetable and the way i work usually is all over the place. i'm up at 4:30 in the morning, we work to 2:00 at night. it's not a 9:00 to 5:00 life. >> rose: people tell me when they start writing a memoir they're surprised at how once you get into it you remember things that you never thought about before. it's dealing with the details of your life that unlocks other details of your life. have you found? >> absolutely. and i think in a way one's training as an actress helps with that because i have -- i love sense memory and i love to close my eyes and think of how things were and how people's voices sounded and so i'm pretty good at that. i can evoke memory quite easily. >> rose: do you call on other people and say "i was thinking about something sma that happened between us and what's your recollection?" or do you depend on your own? >> i did that in several cases but i didn't want it to be anyone else's book and the problem with that you get their story and that often gets you in trouble because people remember you dancing on a table. (laughs) and you were never present there. so you kind of -- i think you have to really be your own guide and follow your own nose. >> rose: no journals that you had? >> i had a few journals from when i was little. someone read my journals when i was in my early 20s and i stopped keeping them for a while. >> rose: someone that you didn't want to read them. >> that's right. >> rose: a boyfriend, by chance? >> no, actually not. someone -- just somebody nosy and intrusive. >> rose: but then no more journals for you? >> no more journals for a while. >> rose: i want to take a look as we talk about this. i love this picture first of all. it's pictures of you that come from your own life and number one is you climbing a tree at st. clarence when you were seven. >> yeah. >> rose: just tell me about what that image says to you. >> well, i was a free kid. my whole impetus was to get out of the house in the morning, run around outside. play with my ponies and climb trees. >> rose: you've always liked horses? >> love horses. >> rose: there's a wonderful picture on the back of you among your horses. do you still ride? >> yes, i do. >> rose: often? >> as often as i can. i have a little ranch up north in california and i have about five horses. they're all kind of getting ancient now. >> rose: but you like to slip away and get outside. >> i love it. >> rose: this is? >> this is my family. that's me on the left with my poodle mindy. my mother with, i believe, shoe-shoe on her lap. my father with his irish wolf hand shea mouse and my brother tony with flash and moses. >> rose: your mom is important in this story. >> she is, indeed. >> rose: you want to make sure she gets the credit she deserves as a strong member of the this family. >> my dad always gets the credit. everybody knows about my dad but my mother was a fantastic very special very unique person, too. >> rose: and this is you as a baby? >> it is. >> rose: oh, i think this is what -- this is you with your brother tony and i asame your mother here? >> yes. >> rose: and there comes the big house that i like so much. this is at st. clarence? >> st. clarence and that's my father's house, the big house. the little house was sort of behind the big house. down that driveway over a river with a bridge and there was a norman castle on the property. >> rose: he kind of liked being lord of the manor, didn't he? >> he kind of did. >> rose: (laughs) >> and fox hunting and all of that. and this is the two of you at the premier of freud at the interlynn international film festival. >> i was very embarrassed that evening because he actually fell asleep during the movie. during the premier. and i was kind of nudging him to keep him awake. >> rose: and then there's another one, you and your sister allegra. this is london, 1965. >> that's in my mother's garden in london. >> rose: here's a very sexy one. this is you applying makeup but it's sort of the body and the idea of the hair pulled back and all of that. this was at a fashion -- >> that was a xande rhodes fashion show. >> i remember xander rhodes, a london designer. is she still designing? >> she still is. she's fantastic. she has multicolored hair and she's unstoppable. >> rose: how do you decide what you will say in a memoir? i would assume one guide is "i don't want to hurt people." another guide is "i want to be truthful." where do you find the balance? >> i think first you have to be in it with no judgments. no judgments on yourself or what you're going to write. and i think you have to do in the an at here in which you feel safe and free. for instance choose yourself some publishers like scribner because they have integrity and they're not going to ask you to do something that's below, hopefully, your dignity. and i think write about the things you want to write about. one of the problems-- because i read a few biographies before i began on my own-- was this feeling that you get with some people's biographys that they really don't want to be there. they don't want to be telling you those stories and you think well, then why? probably because they want to make a little money from it which is -- they're not to be blamed for that but on the other hand i think to bore people is you know, one of the primary sins, isn't it? >> well, yes. to bore people is a sin and secondly not to do what you're passionate about is a sin, too. this whole idea that life ought to be following your passion. hopefully it merges with the kind of work you get a lot of satisfaction of. >> and that depends on whether you have a passion. for so many things one doesn't have a passion and one has to build a passion. so i think one really has en-to-engage with the questions "why do i want to write this? what is it that i want to say? who is it that i'm speaking to?" >> did you have person in mind when you were writing this? >> both of my parents. >> rose: really. >> very much so. because i think in a way many people misapprehend what my father was about. they see him as a kind of larger-than-life guy striding through jungle and they're kind of -- in a one dimensional way. but he was a complicated man. very layered, very nuanced. and the idea of my father in this sort of popular idea of his going off to uganda to kill big game instead of make a movie which was an idea popularized by a book called "white hunter black heart" written i think is sort of an erroneous view of my father. sure he liked big game. he also loved making movies and did it literally until he dropped in his '80s after making the -- >> rose: what do you think made him a good filmmaker. >> well, he thought initially he might be a painter but he always said he didn't think he was good enough as a painter and this's why he became director. i think that's $'s maybe some truth in that. >> rose: he might have been a good painter, you any >> i think he was a good painter. but it's also the years that he spent as a child confined to his room having been diagnosed with 8enlarged heart by l doctors. the and he was not allowed outside and he wasn't allowed to play and so he spent hours in his room making play figures and drawing and inventing stories and i think many artists have lonely childhoods or child noodz which they -- they're forced to kind of invent their own past times. >> rose: you say in this that it took you to places you can't imagine looking at your life like this. what did you mean? >> well, there were things that i'd kind of -- not forgotten necessarily but i'd kind of skimmed over and also reexamining the tough stuff. and finding out just what it means to you. my mother's death, my father's passing in the second book. but revisiting places that i thought were finished. >> rose: he put that away. but if you were going to write a memoir you will go back and dig down. how hard is that. >> it's a lot harder than writing something you don't care about. >> and because i approached in the an actorly way there's a certain amount of satisfaction with being able to get to the point. >> rose: did you think -- was it inevitable that you would go back an actress? >> i have a baby book that my mother kept from the earliest days of my inception little footprints and hand prints. and i think the first thing that i wrote by myself in that baby book was at the age of five or six "i want to be an actress." >> rose: five or six. and what did you do, then, to become an actress. how smart did you -- how much -- how serious did you take sdplaft >> well, craft at six is a little -- >> rose: well, i know, but not -- or even 10. or even 15. >> truly. >> rose: but at some point you've got to say "i want to be good at this." because people you and i like are good at it. >> that's true. but i started really early. i started by looking in the mirror when i was very young. >> rose: and what did you see? i saw a plain little girl with brown hair and freckles and green eyes and i wanted to see if she could cry on cue so i'd practice that. and we had some books in our upstairs bathroom at st. clarence in the mitt house and one of them was the cartoons of charles adams. so i used to practice looking like morticia which was of course a fore taste of things to come. but i think it was mostly emoting to see what it would look like and the effect of emotion on a face. >> rose: did he now you wanted to become an actor? did he care. >> i think he didn't want me to be hurt by the profession. sooner or later it's going to hurt you. it's a question of whether you should survive that and get on with it. but i think he knew that i had some sort of innate talent because i like to take off on people. >> rose: well, because he knows talent, too, i would suspect. the idea of -- but at the same time he was larger than life and as is often true with men who are larger than life their appetite has to do not only with life and work but also with women. >> rose: yes. >> rose: how did that affect you? >> well, my father had very beautiful girlfriends. it only affected me when i knew they were girlfriends. i thought they were my friends to begin with. they'd share their makeup and let me wear their stockings and high heels. >> rose: they didn't tell you they were going the upstairs bedroom. >> and, then after my parents separated i'd go back to london and tell my mother about these wonderful women who let me wear their makeup and i wonder why she looked a little sour. >> rose: or sad. >> yes. what's the most painful thing to remember? >> her death. >> rose: and you want us to understand and appreciater in what way? >> well, she wasn't just beauty-- although she was a serious beauty. she was a deep person. very emotional whereas my father was quite cut and dried and i don't believe he really believed in an afterlife as such. he was one of those guys that's like "when you're dead you're dead." but my mother had a more spiritual side and she was a seeker and a lover of beauty and very funny and very wonderful. >> rose: you had a kind of healing conversation with her before she died. >> i did. yeah. >> rose: what was that about? >> i'd been sort of errant. i was a teenager and i was skipping school and hanging out with the wrong crowd and that kind of thing. i'd begun being deceitful and sneaking around she came to my room before she was to leave on a trip for venice, italy. she was going on a driving trip with someone that i didn't know at that point and she came to my room one night before on the pre-text of borrowing one of my kind of women's magazines. i liked those ladies magazines that have a problem page. i'd go in my bathroom and read the problem page. and she said anjel, we need to have a talk. >> rose: she called you "anjel? >> when i was good. anjelica when i was not so good. and she sat on my bed and said "we're going to have to come to a new understanding. you're growing up and i've concealed things from you in the past but i don't think we can do that anymore if we're going to live the same house and maybe you'd like to think of what do you -- you'd like to live in the place of your own soon. because we're going to have to figure this out. and i burst into tears and she cried and. we held each other and had this fantastic moment of reproachment and she left my room with the woman's magazine and the next morning i was down stairs in the house and i was so of sitting at the piano playing with the keys and she came down stairs and i knew she was going to leave on this trip and she looked really pretty which made me think she was not going alone and -- >> rose: (laughs) >> and we kissed good-bye and that was the last time i saw her. >> rose: she died in a car accident. >> uh-huh. >> rose: she knew you knew. >> yes, she knew i knew, of course. >> rose: was it hard for you with him, though? the fact that -- all of the relationships he had? was that hard for you or did you just accept it? >> i think when i first discovered or made that little discovery i was very shocked. and it was quite late because i was really very innocent up until that first moment where -- of discovery. after that not so much. except, of course, when i was summoned to rome to be told about the birth of my little brother danny, of course, two years later. he was a toddler by the time i met him. >> rose: this picture was taken by bob richardson, right? >> yes. >> rose: what was your relationship? >> he was my lover for almost four years when i first came to new york. he was also a very grate photographer. >> rose: richard avenue nonwas a great photographer. >> he was, indeed. the best of the best. >> rose: i sometimes people -- if you're in love with a woman or sometimes if you have -- if you can see beyond just the -- what's on the face of it you can take remarkable photographs. >> i think so. and, of course, dick was another kind of photographer. dick -- dick was all about beauty and perfection and i think bob -- bob's photograph as you can see by this photograph, very interior, very soulful. most of bob's models were in tears, smoking, walking down the street, lonely, depressed and, of course, dick avedon's women were birds of paradise. >> rose: what's not here is jack nicholson. that is to come in the second book. how many years together? >> on and off sort of 17 years. >> rose: 17! what was the imagine snick >> oh, he -- he is a fantastic person. >> rose: the most interesting man you've ever -- >> i would say way up there. yeah. and certainly a source of unbridled interest in many things. he and dad got along really, really well. they loved each other. >> rose: i would think so. >> that's understandable, you know? they love sports and they like man stuff. and it was actually -- >> rose: jack likes basketball and golf. >> of course. and dad loved hunting and getting out thered on horseback. and i think actually what was interesting about both men was that men love my father and jack just as much as women do, if not maybe a little more. >> rose: and you mean by that they look -- some people sometimes talk about a certain man they'll say, you know, "men envy them and women love them." they've got a whole sense of envy. or, in fact, as you say, admiration or loving them because they are living the kind of life or they are what they would imagine themselves to be at their best. >> exactly, exactly. >> rose: and somehow if they say it feel like there's a certain camaraderie between them that they share certain kinds of qualities. >> yeah. and i think it gives the guys hope. and it's not just all about women, either. which is, i think, the big misconception of, oh, warren and jack are just big low their owes. and maybe they are. but the point with both people is that they're extremely intelligent and that's not to be taken lightly. it's a very deep quality that they both share. >> rose: extremely intelligent and passionate about excellence. >> yes. >> rose: about doing it well. >> yes. >> rose: warren being some kind of perfectionist. >> that's why jack calls him the pro. >> rose: (laughs) >> rose: going to go see the pro. this book is called "a story lately told: coming of age in ireland, london and new york." volume two of this memoir which will include jack and her late husband the great sculptor and all of that will be coming soon. when will volume two be, a year or two? >> a year probably. >> rose: have you finished yet? >> not yet. i'm still writing. i'm sort of on a first pass. >> rose: will it be easier for you now that you've done this? >> i don't think so. i think volume two will probably be more difficult. >> because? >> because more people are alive and that's more people to possibly hopefully not offend. one of the big fears i have that when i went into this was hurting somebody and god forbid i do anything like that. so -- and that doesn't mean that i'm just setting out to be kind. i'm -- i'm very -- it's very important to me that these books are about me, what was going on with me and i don't want to cast aspersions on anyone else. >> rose: that's exactly what memoirs are supposed to be -- about you. >> i hope so. >> rose: thank you, angelica. thank you so much. thank you for joining us, see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org . this is nightly business report with tyler mathisen and susie gharib brought to you in part by. >> thestreet.com. up to the minute stock market news and in depth analysis. our quant rating service provides objective independent ratings daily on over 4300 stocks. learn more at the street.com/nbr. nasdaq 4,000, the index cloemss above that milestone for the first time in 13 years. but is it different now, and is the composite healthier than back then? >> turn around, on track, so says hewlett packard ceo and the stock pops on the earnings news. what's the one thing invems tors need to focus on now? and housing market mo

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