I love to work, and I f---ing love So Help Me Todd. I get to play this smart mom, and do screwball comedy and drama with heart, and film half indoors and half out, and work with [costar] Skylar Astin, who is also a theater actor like me. We’ve been told we have really great chemistry.

I auditioned as a lead in Miller’s Crossing in 1988 and got really lucky! The Coen brothers are just such stellar writers and directors and people, and have a history of casting female unknowns, like Holly Hunter, Frances McDormand—and me. They put us on the map.

Don’t stop growing! It’s not like you hit a certain age and go backwards. I just feel like more and more opens up if you allow it to.

Along with work, reading and pottery ground me, and my kids are always at the forefront of my mind. I love historical fiction, like All the Light We Cannot See, and books about anthropology. Early on I decided that I can’t be embarrassed by what I don’t know. If I simply don’t know, I ask questions.

When you get to 64, you’ve suffered tragedies, friends or family members who have been sick or died, and you realize the preciousness of every day. I think I’ve grown wiser, leaving the personal drama behind. The energy of flying off the handle over such small stuff was just wasted.

You can’t control your children. If you could mold a child in your image, every parent would. But who wants a child in their own image? You want them to be who they are—and you have to let them fail. That was a huge lesson of my 40s and 50s. Now I have three kids who are enormously independent.

I’m on my own. I’m in love with my friends. I’m in love with my life. I’m in love with my work. And I’m not feeling a hole. That said, if the right person came along, that would be great. —As told to Katherine Brodsky