bon-aventures:

It was the culmination of a lifetime of self-exploration; she found depths of feelings in herself that surprised and even shocked her. The work went marvelously— even in the things that were in a way a violation of her. She’s not a physical actress, she doesn’t like to touch people, handle people. It’s not her style. In the third act, when Edmund, her son, played by Dean Stockwell, says, “Momma, I’m going to die,” I said, “Kate, I’m going to have to ask you to do something here that’s going to come as a great shock. When he says ‘I’m going to die,’ I want you to reach back and haul off and sock him across the face like you never hit anybody in your life before.” She immediately knew the sense of that— the emotional sense— but she was absolutely terrified. It was horrifying, a terrible thing for her to do, there was nothing in her that could ever manifest itself in that kind of violence. But she knew how right it was for the character, she knew the sense of it. She asked, ‘Let me do it tomorrow,’ and the following day she did it after thinking about it all night: Whap!

— Sidney Lumet [dir. of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, 1962]