I’ve been making movies for fifty years this year. I’m not at all surprised that I’m still here—it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t just keep working. But that’s not from the point of view of “Oh, I’m so good,” it’s that it’s just meant to be: It’s destiny. If I live into my nineties, I’ll be working till then.

I’m interested in the experience of being other people for a little while—I consider it almost a retreat. Also, I enjoy going into those parts of myself that I haven’t been yet, because I think every part you play is part of yourself. And I enjoy the familial environment on the set—the sense of respect and appreciation that everybody working on a picture has for somebody who’s being asked to get up every morning at 5 a.m. and go be somebody else. Especially after having fought the traffic.

I’m also enjoying the experience of aging: There’s something to do with getting older that gives you the right to express any feeling you have. When you’re younger, you’re not really sure of what your feelings are, so therefore you can be, let’s say, pixie-ish, the way I was—I was constantly surprised and full of wonder and that showed in my acting. But when you get older, you not only have the right to express yourself completely, but the duty to do so. In fact, I wanted to play Ouiser in [1989’s] Steel Magnolias because I wanted to feel how free it would be to be like her when I got older. It felt fabulous-God, I loved it!-and I think I've been employing that tactic pretty frequently now.

When you have a sense of experience and wisdom, you realize that life itself is, basically, a theatrical manipulation of mostly bullshit, and so you have a certain reaction to that which could be called “cantankerous.” I think a better word is “direct,” and that’s an easy thing for me to play—it’s more who I am now. But the interesting question is, what happened in between the “pixie” to what some call the “ball-breaker.”

Back in 1954, I was in the Broadway chorus of The Pajama Game. I was understudying the role of Gladys, who had the big “Steam Heat” number, knowing that Carol [Haney] would go on [even] with a broken neck. But one night I showed up late because the subway got stuck, and there, all lined up at the stage door, were [Pajama Game choreographer and future director of MacLaine’s Sweet Charity] Bob Fosse and [producer] Hal Prince and [codirector] Jerry Robbins saying, “You’re on!” The conductor asked, “What key do you sing in?” I said, “I don’t know.”

I’d never had a rehearsal, and I was worried about dropping my hat in the number. Which I did, and said, “Shit!” But when we took our bows, the audience stood, and [movie producer] Hal B. Wallis happened to be there. Warren [Beatty, her brother] and I had always gone to see Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis pictures “Produced by Hal B. Wallis,” and that’s all I remembered about him.

He said that I should make a screen test. I had no idea what a screen test was. (By the way, Hal Prince said, “Get more experience; don’t go to Hollywood.”) But I got to the studio, and back then they’d always use the same scripts for screen tests, but I’d never learned “Voice of the Turtle,” so I wasn’t gonna act in the test. So I said, “Let’s get a stool, and somebody get me a scarf,” and began to do some little dance moves with the scarf, and then the director interviewed me on camera. From then on, they began to test people as a personality rather than playing a part—the “personality test” was born.

I signed a seven-year contract with Hal B. Wallis and then went back to the chorus in Pajama Game. Then Carol was out once more in the fall, and that time Hitch’s people were there [as in Alfred Hitchcock, who directed MacLaine’s first film, 1955’s The Trouble With Harry].

I wasn’t scared of Hitchcock at all: When I first met him at his suite at the Waldorf, I was mainly interested in how he could move around with such fat legs. So I asked him to do some moves for me. And he did—he put his leg and foot up on the chair and went, “La!” I kept asking him to do that again because it was so cute. Then we did a reading of The Trouble With Harry with Mildred Dunnock and John Forsythe, and I read the part, and that’s when he said I had “the guts of a bank robber.” He never said a thing to me on the movie, though. Well, except “Dog’s feet.” “Dog’s feet” is a pause. That’s how he directed.

The idea of being in movies was, like, secondary to me—like a little hobby that went along with being in this place called Hollywood, California. I was mostly concerned with “What is it like living where there are no seasons?” [Her “big break”] didn’t make me feel anything. It happened to me so that’s all I knew. Later, when I began to examine it, I realized that this was my destiny—that it was what I’d signed up for, basically. (I don’t have a question with the concept that you choose your parents before you’re born. That’s why it makes so much sense to me that I chose a mother who wanted to be an actress and a father who wanted to run away and join the circus, but who both chose, instead, marriage and children. That left me and Warren the technique of fulfilling their disappointed dreams.) It was who I was and was supposed to be. But I also was supposed to be traveling, and I felt this need to go out and see the world at the same time that I was adjusting to the fact I was becoming this star in Hollywood. (Though I’ve never thought of myself as a “star”—I can go with “iconic” and “legendary” a little bit now, because of my longevity.)

The Rat Pack happened pretty quick after: Frank [Sinatra] had seen me on a TV show and called the studio and said, “I want that girl [for 1958’s Some Came Running].” And let me say that, during their time, the Rat Pack were so outrageous that the likes of them won’t come along again—with them, all bets were off, and we’re living in such a climate of fear and in such a curtailed society now that those people would probably be sent to jail. But, anyway, Some Came Running’s Ginny is still one of my favorites. Her care for other people, her ability to love, just everything about her moved me. I saw that hooker with the heart of gold thing right away.