How did he do it? He let his passion show. He didn’t hold back. He was willing to look foolish if it meant getting his point across and moving “the next fella” to action. He never “taught” or “preached” (although he was related to the turn-of-the-century orator and presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan). He was a passionate listener. He knew instinctively that the greatest way to pay respect to anyone — a child, an elderly person, someone on top of the world, or someone in pain — is to listen. He also knew that the old saying is right: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

After I graduated from college, I went to the Yale School of Drama as a postgrad acting major. Although I had minored in drama in college, I had never thought I was much of an actress. Actually, in four years, I had never played a girl’s part. I went to a women’s college, and I was always cast as the male lead. I played the devil in Damn Yankees, Woody in Finian’s Rainbow (I had to sing a love song to one of my best female friends), Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Vladimir in Waiting for Godot. I enjoyed it but didn’t take any of it very seriously.

My parents drove me to New Haven and helped me unpack. It wasn’t until they were about to leave that the panic set in. “Wait,” I said. “What am I doing here? I’m not really an actress. I was just having fun in college. I don’t really know what I’m doing. I — ”

“Wait a second,” my dad said. “Who said you had to be an actress? You’re a student. If you like it, maybe you’ll become an actress. Just do what you’ve always done and make it fun. Hey,” he added with a laugh, “maybe you’ll even get to play a girl once in a while!”

The drama school was a serious place, and my fellow students were not just fooling around. One of our first assignments was to walk out onto the stage and say who we were, where we were from, and what acting we had done. The audience, made up of all the other first-year drama-school students, was instructed to vote on whether we were “heavy” or “light.” I can tell you right now, it wasn’t good to be light. Light meant you couldn’t take the stage, that you didn’t have presence or gravitas, that you weren’t commanding. To be light was to be forgettable.

I called my dad the night before we had to go on. “I can’t do this,” I said. “I’ll feel foolish. How can I tell them that I’ve played nothing but boys’ parts? These people have done Off-Off Broadway. They’re almost professional. They’ll know I’m a lightweight.”