Laura: So, what was it like for you, Dad? The first moment we were acting together [in "Palm Royale"]? I'm curious. I haven't asked him that.

Bruce: I'm in my bed [in the scene]. And suddenly I hear a [softly mimics] "Helllllooo." I look up and don't see anything. I see a cake coming around a corner of a doorway with this face [points to Laura]. That was a surprise.

Laura: We tried not to get too rehearsal-y so that we capture —

Bruce: I don't rehearse. Not just with her. I don't do it because when I went through my whole idea of behavior, I found that the most crippling thing to the suddenness of real behavior to other actors is they need to hear themselves say the lines once to know if it's right. The minute I walked out on set, it was obvious that she was the reason that I was there, but she was also the reason that the show was there. I've never produced a film. What I liked about this was we had no rules. If she took me down a certain path, I just personalized it totally and brought it back into our level of what we're talking about. What happened was things came up that nobody expected to come up and the crew never moved; they never left the room. They stayed because that was the greatest applause for my way of having gone down this road now as an actor, was to let me try different things.

Lee Strasberg — I taught for him one time. He would come out here [to L.A.] in the summer, then he'd go back to New York in the winter. The Actor's Studio had to go on and there were four of us that did the teaching — Mark Rydell, Lee Grant, Peggy Feury and Martin Landau. Lee gave all of us permission to go on. And Lee said, "But I want you to do your thing when you teach. I don't want you to try and teach him how to act." I said, "Acting is out. I'm trying to make them understand [whispers] 'stop acting ... just let it happen.'"

Q: Laura, how was it to witness the Dernsies unfold while sharing a scene with him?

Laura: Well, the Dernsies are my favorite thing. I've been raised on movie sets with both my parents my whole life, so I wasn't unfamiliar with them. But to be there with Ricky Martin [who plays Robert Diaz, a Korean War veteran and employee at the town's country club] for our first scene, the three of us together —

Bruce: First of all, I'm blown away. Ricky Martin?! This is Menudo in my f— bedroom.

Laura: It was amazing.

Bruce: He was the nicest kid. And very professional.

...continued

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