Oprah considers Diahann Carroll a living legend, and certainly, she looks the same as she did when she starred on television in the 1960s. An award-winning singer and actress, she is mainly known as the first black actress to star in her own television show, Julia, and is currently seen on Grey's Anatomy. Her memoir, The Legs are the Last to Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying, Mothering and Other Things I Have Learned Long the Way will be coming out in October, 2008.She claims that throughout her life she has been a perfectionist, but she is more comfortable with herself nowadays. “Good enough is good enough,” she says. Her background in the theatre and music, a process of rehearsal and performance, had caused to be fussy about her life. But because “you find out about yourself from your mistakes,” she now claims and has toned down her angst about perfection.
She believes that aging gracefully is up to the individual to choose. She mentions the character of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard who, as she ages, becomes oblivious to her waning (and then nonexistent) role in the film industry, and compares it to her own musical career and the crisis she faced when Motown entered the picture.
Briefly, she mentioned the discrimination she faced while on television. During the making of Julia, she was rejected by both the black and white community. She understands that this was a black working woman with a child who had maintained her dignity in the face of widowhood, and that no one seemed to believe her character was non-stereotypical. Today, her ideas on race relations are controversial. “We don't understand that the world was put here for all of us. When greed enters the equation, people who aren't prejudiced will say they are if it puts money in their pockets. Sometimes we are more greedy than we are loving.” She is a little more forgiving of friends and those she keeps close to her. As a breast cancer survivor, she speaks of loving support of her friends and family, but especially friends. They supported her through chicken pox while having fourteen weeks of radiation. During that time, she gathered information from reading and the Internet, and wanted to be courageous.
Men are a prominent topic in her new book. She agrees that her relationships were immature, selfish and tempestuous, and based on a lack of information. She hopes that the young women in show business today learn from their mistakes. What would she say to them? “There is no such thing as advice,” she says. “The only thing you can do is simply change yourself,” and once again she mentions relying on family. She thanks God for her grandchildren because they see her as she is without the accouterments.
She also thanks the librarian community. As a child growing up on 148th Street in New York City, she was grateful for her weekly library visits in junior high school - she felt welcomed and felt she had gained something more than she expected. She mentioned two good friends who guided her on the importance of reading: Harry Belafonte, who instructed her to read The New York Times each and every morning, and the late Roscoe Lee Brown, who enriched her life with poetry.
Ms. Carroll openly discussed her personal life. Throughout all the years, she has had a a multitude of therapies, including LSD therapies, and uncovered personal mysteries (she discovered how “she came to be in her parents' lives”). “It opened a door that my parents and I were afraid of. It started a dialogue.” (Southern manners had always stood in the way of real communication.) She said that she and Cary Grant benefited from this therapy, but because it requires so much time and effort, she does not recommend it for everyone.
Diahann Carroll is not ready to retire, but at age 73, will age gracefully indeed.
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