Interview with Carol Kane
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Carol Kane
Cleveland-born actress, Oscar-nominated for Hester Street, known for Taxi, The Princess Bride, Scrooged and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
Source: SAG-AFTRA Foundation on YouTube
These answers are taken from Carol Kane Career Retrospective | Conversations at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation on SAG-AFTRA Foundation's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with acting?
My mom was a dancer and a musician and my father an architect, and they had these beautiful picture books, a lot of them of the ballet and the costumes and makeup. When I was little, I used to sit in front of the mirror every Sunday with my makeup kit from FAO Schwarz, which I was madly in love with, and do the makeups from the book. I was probably five.
I think the first thing I performed in was The Wizard of Oz. I remember the head of the program, his name was Jerry Leonard, and he was so brilliant. We were these teeny little kids and we did that scene where you say, don't go to the East, don't go to the West. And this is a clear memory for me: Jerry Leonard comes storming down the aisle of the theater and onto the stage saying, you can't just point randomly to the right and the left. The East is the East. It was that demanding of the kids, to be thoughtful and professional. It was a great lesson: respect the work and take it seriously, and don't just think that you can get away with anything.
What attracted you to begin a career as an actor?
My mom took me to see a play when I was six or seven, and I just fell madly in love from the second I sat down, and wanted to be part of it. She was kind enough to schlep me back and forth to the youth theater that was there, which was excellent theater.
I started when I was just a little kid, being in love with that, and at that time there was no other choice for me. When I got older, I wished that I had studied to be a vet tech, because I would have liked so badly to do that work with animals. Except that I failed math and science.
I don't know how to do my days when I'm not working. I'm happiest when I'm acting, I think.
What was a great moment for you as an actor?
Mike Nichols was so kind and he was so supportive, and I think that was one of his great gifts: the confidence that he would make you feel. I was just overwhelmed. The day I got there, I met Mike, who was so great, and then he brought me into the screening room where they were going to see the dailies, and there's Jack Nicholson and Jules Feiffer and Art Garfunkel, and I'm just this kid. I'm in shock.
I remember on the first day I was so frightened, and I just said to him, I'm so frightened that I won't live up to what you want. And he said, oh, you can't do anything wrong. You're perfect for this part. And he said it with the kind of loving sincerity that made me believe it, and gave me strength and confidence, which was such a miracle. I've often wondered why more directors don't work harder to make their actors feel wanted and confident, because it gives you so much freedom when you feel that the director's already confident in you.
How did your acting career unfold?
I was doing a lot of extra work, and there was a gentleman who used to cast all the extras in New York named Vic Ramos. Mike Nichols was already shooting up in Vancouver, and the young woman who was going to play this part dropped out. Juliet Taylor was looking madly for someone to replace her, and she called Vic, and Vic, who cast me as an extra, remembered me and sent my picture to Juliet, and Juliet sent my picture to Mike. They flew me out there to meet him, and I fortunately did get the part and stayed to do the work. It was a dream, still to this day.
Then I did a Canadian movie called Wedding in White. I was 19, and I was so in love with Hal Ashby's work. I heard that he was coming to Toronto, and I found out where he was staying and I wrote him a letter: Dear Mr. Ashby, I love your work so much, I'd love to work with you. Then I stayed on Graham Beckel's couch for days and days, and then I got a call from Hal to come and meet him, and I got that part. I was audacious enough to think it was a good idea to sleep on someone's couch for a week.
What advice do you have for new actors?
I was a horrible perfectionist when I was young. I still wish I was perfect, but I've given up that agonizing struggle, because I have realized as I get older that it's the process of the work that is all you have. No matter how good something is that you do, it's not necessarily going to be seen by anyone anyway. You can never predict that, but you can sort of control the atmosphere of your day and the friends you make. So it's about the friendships and the day.
A lot of great things happen when you're young and you don't know any better, and you're insanely brave. You haven't failed yet. Once you start failing, then you get frightened, and that I think leads to more failure.
Training is helpful. I studied with Bill Hickey at HB Studio, and then with a Lee Strasberg method teacher named Marilyn Fried, who coached me on Hester Street. She has a lot to do with why I'm here.
What has been your greatest accomplishment as an actor?
On Hester Street, I am proud of the work I did, which is not something I say very much. I think it's an extraordinary accomplishment on Joan's part. I think it was $375,000, the whole budget of that movie, and she knew she had to shoot it in black and white, which was not an easy thing to be allowed to do.
I auditioned for her over and over and over again. I went through cartwheels and hoops. After I'd auditioned several times in English, I was sent to the Yiddish coach from the Yiddish theater and learned the lines in Yiddish phonetically. I didn't speak Yiddish. And then I had to audition in Yiddish.
They could only afford to have one horse, and the horse goes by several times. What they did, and Joan and Ray were very proud of this, was they painted the horse different colors. It's really true. They made do. They made it work.
Think about a demanding director, professor or cast mate. What made him or her difficult? How did you successfully interact with this person?
I am from the stage, and rehearsal is something I love and depend upon. Andy Kaufman, some people called him stand-up, but I think he was a performance artist, and he felt that rehearsing diminished his work. He had it in his contract, and he would only come in two days a week of the five days that we rehearsed. On the other days there was a nice young man named Jeff who had a cardboard sign around his neck that said Andy. And I would build up this anger over the course of the week, especially when it was our show, Latka and Simka, and he still wouldn't come in.
Then on the day that we would shoot, which was Friday night, we would have this duplicate conversation every week. I would explain to him how upset I was that he wouldn't rehearse with me, and he would explain to me that he completely understood, but that he couldn't do it. It was almost word for word the same every week. I couldn't give it up and he couldn't give his thing up. And then we would understand each other by the end of the discussion, which enabled us to go out there and be in love.
Have you progressed in your acting career as you have expected?
The fact of my career has been that one thing does not lead to another. You think, oh, they love this, and then I'll get more work, and then you don't, and then you do, and then you don't. That's been the rhythm of my career. And I'm not complaining, because I've gotten to work with some of the greatest directors and actors and writers ever. After my nomination I sat by the phone and stared at it, like when you're in love with a boy and you're praying they call. And then a year later I got a call from Gene Wilder to be in The World's Greatest Lover.
Auditioning for me sort of got worse and worse over the years. It got more and more painful, and I couldn't take the rejection anymore. I was in my 60s, and I told my manager and my agent that I wouldn't audition anymore. And I got a call in a couple of weeks to do Kimmy Schmidt without auditioning.
I'm just in shock to have gotten this great role at my age, because there comes a time when the role that you're going to be given is Grandma, and they're all going to be limited, two-dimensional or one-dimensional.
Who is your favorite actor, and why?
Jack Nicholson, who I've had the privilege of working with twice, but it doesn't make it any easier. I'm just starstruck. I'm in awe around him. I did a reading once of a movie with Robert De Niro, and he's totally like, forget it. I just think he's the greatest.
Al, since I've done a lot of theater with Al, I don't have that same feeling, because it's so long ago that we met. We were so young and we did all this theater together, and Dog Day, so we have a history that makes me feel not intimidated around Al, even though he's one of our great ones. He's always mesmerizing to watch in the work process.
Right now I am in love with this new movie called Emilia Perez. I just can't get over those performances, the direction, the singing, the dancing. And His Three Daughters I thought was extraordinary. I love Natasha Lyonne. I think that's a magnificent performance.
Tell me about a time where you had difficulty with a character. What was the role and why was it challenging?
On Between the Temples there turned out never to be a script. I got what the director Nathan Silver calls a scriptment, which is somewhere between a treatment, a script and a chapter book. I was terrified, because I had never done any improv before. He promised me that before we start to shoot there would be a script, and then about a week before, he had to confess to me that there would not be. That wasn't their process. And thank goodness he stayed with his instincts and didn't compromise his way of working, because it's very unique and terrifying, and I think it made the film very special.
He would come in the night before, or two nights before, and we would get pages for the scene, and then we would shoot the scene as written, and invariably he would say, no, no, that's not it at all. He would have us improvise on what had been written and the structure that was there, and we would shoot it over and over again until he felt that it was right. To his great credit, he would not stop until it was right. That was sometimes very challenging.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your resume.
On Scrooged I was madly trying to learn the little ballet dance that my character does for her introduction. I had a wonderful teacher, and she taught me to get on pointe, but it was a given that there was going to be a stunt double, a real ballerina. I worked so hard, and then came the day when Dick [Donner] sent Michael Riva, the art director, into our little rehearsal hall to see how it was progressing. Michael just sat there hysterically laughing the whole time, and that was not pleasant for me, because I thought I was doing a good job. But then he gave me the gift of telling Dick that he should use me doing the dance, and use the fact that I was struggling and doing such a horrible job. It made the character for me.
When I did Annie Hall, I had to learn a piece on the cello, which was cut out of the movie. I was so proud of myself for getting the fingering correct. I get on the set and do this to the best of my ability, and clearly Woody and the whole crew were horrified at the sounds coming out of this cello. That was the end of that scene.
In which area would you like to improve as an actor?
I'm almost allergic to my voice. I hear it and I think, what the hell is that? Except I do know that I can change the register and the quality of it from role to role.
It's a little pathetic, but I have to run my lines with someone else. A lot of people are adept at using a tape recorder, or nowadays a cell phone, and recording the other person's lines. People have these different methods that I admire so much, because I'm totally dependent on having somebody read the script with me over and over and over again. That's the only way I know how to do it, and it's not so good, because that means you can't do it alone.
I haven't done that much voice work in animation. I've always wished I could.
Carol Kane's Full Biography
American stage, screen and television actress, and comedian Carol Kane (b. Carolyn Laurie Kane, June 18, 1952, in Cleveland, Ohio), was born to Elaine Joy (née Fetterman), a jazz singer and pianist, and Michael Myron Kane, an architect. Her family is Jewish (from Russia, Poland, and Austria). Due to her parents' divorce, Carol spent most of her childhood in boarding schools until 1965. She also attended Professional Children's School in Upper West Side New York, and made her professional theater debut in a 1966 production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) starring Tammy Grimes. Kane, just 14 years old.
At 20 years old, Kane landed the lead role in William Fruets World War II film, Wedding in White (1972). Kane starred as Jeannie Dougall, a teenager whom after is raped is left with a moral dilemma when she discovers that the incident has left her pregnant. The actress received a surprise Academy Award nomination for her performance in the 1974 independent film, Hester Street (1975); Times of Israel describes Kane's character, Gitl, as "a straight-from-the-shtetl immigrant who, with her young son, joins her husband (Steven Keats) who is already halfway assimilated in New York's Lower East Side; the push and the pull between tradition and change drive the story to its bittersweet conclusion."
The following decade, from 1980-1983, she appeared on the television series Taxi (1978). Kane portrayed Simka Dahblitz-Gravas, wife of Latka Gravas (Andy Kaufman). She received two Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe nomination for her work in the series. Over the years, Kane racked up tons of credits from Taxi and The Princess Bride (1987), to Scrooged (1988), and more recently, the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015); the actress is making audiences laugh by playing Lillian Kaushtupper, in a recent interview, Kane described Lillian as "a hardworking landlady in Harlem who is very attached to the life in New York as she's known it."