ESTELLE PARSONS: I'M NOT DONE YET

At 95, the acclaimed stage actress, Oscar winner and Roseanne alum reflects on the long road she’s traveled.

- Natalie Posner

She’s won an Academy Award and spent a decade on one of the most popular sitcoms of all time, but Estelle Parsons has never liked very much about Hollywood. “I don’t spend any more time there than I have to,” says Estelle, 95, who is best known to television viewers for playing irascible matriarch Beverly Harris on Roseanne. “It was a bit of a dalliance for me. I just went out for the fun of it,” Estelle admits of her decision to do the show. “And now I’m on The Conners.”

Despite her success in television and film, Estelle’s greatest love has always been theater. “My work is my fun,” she says. “I’m very active at the Actors Studio in New York. I hope to produce a show this fall. I also do more directing now. I quite enjoy that.”

When did you realize you were a born performer? 

When I was about 7 and I was in my first community theater show. I played a frog-it involved a frog head, of course. The minute I got out on stage in that frog head, I said to myself, "I'm never wearing anything over my head on a stage again." And I never have!

Were your parents supportive of your acting dreams?

I am a New Englander. My family goes back to 1632. That means that I didn't have dreams except to grow up and have my daddy give me a house and get married to the boy next door. But the other part of being a New Englander is that it was all right to be literary, although it was not all right to go on the stage.

You knew Jack Lemmon from childhood, didn't you?