My dad said he had a teacher named Epatha who was influential in keeping him in school. But my mother said it was an old girlfriend of his. So that's why she stuck in the Sharon Epatha. That's what the "S" stands for. Everyone knows now because some numbskull I went to high school with decided to put it on the Internet.

On playing Lola in "Come Back Little Sheba": I'm usually typecast as strong, authoritative, so to find that kind of vulnerability is a real challenge. But Lola is not so far from me, either. I was married, and I understand how to be lonely in a marriage. I believe she's in menopause. And that alone, hormonally, can send a woman into a tailspin. Add in her alcoholic husband, and (you've got) a decent person who's just, um ... stuck. In the past. But she's muuuch stronger than she thinks.