Christine Baranski

I was very nervous.

I bit my fingernails to the bone.

I just didn't feel comfortable for quite a few years.

But I think one of the reasons I'm sitting here as someone who's achieved something in her life was because

The way to survive was by being a good student.

And I became good at that.

I was a good student and I was a very hard worker.

And from the time I was in sixth or seventh grade, I was voted president of my class all the way through high school.

I was always voted president of the class.

I became comfortable with public speaking in front of my classmates and giving the valedictory address and all that.

But I think my way of getting attention or getting approval was to be an achiever.

Now, I don't know if my father had lived.

My mother often said, your father would not have approved of you going on the stage.

He would not have approved of you going to New York to study acting.

I thought, how odd, because he loved performers.

He wanted me to study ballet.

But she thought he would have been very wary of sending me off.

But my mother did.

I got a scholarship to Juilliard and I left Buffalo.

But she may have also been wrong about your father.