When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

I was tremendously fortunate to be alive and a lawyer, working at a university so I had more flexible hours, when the women's movement was coming alive and when it became possible to argue successfully for a view of the equal protection clause that included women.

The concern was that if a woman was doing gender equality, her chances of making it to tenure in the law school were diminished. It was considered frivolous.

When I was 16, I went to Berlin - West Berlin, since at that time a wall still divided the city - to live for three months with a family on an exchange program.

As an actor ages north of 60, he tends to be in more father roles than anything else. It's generational. And it tends to be a relationship that fascinates people, the flawed relationships between parents and kids.

All the women that are first born daughters in my family are named Mary, but we've all been given nicknames. I don't know how or why that started, but I'm nicknamed after my great-grandmother, who was Mamie. No one ever calls me Mary, except only if my husband is very serious about something.

If I could embed a locator chip in my child right now, I know I would do that. Some people call that Big Brother; I call it being a father.