Actress Kathy Bates has been a staple on television and movies for decades. She is known to play fierce characters and in real life, she is just as intimidating.

The actress was diagnosed with a chronic condition that forced her to make some very drastic changes…

In 1970, Kathy Bates headed to New York to try her luck at acting. She reminisces about the time, how she was never an ingenue but managed to make it work. “I was never an ingenue,” she says. “I’ve always just been a character actor. When I was younger, it was a real problem, because I was never pretty enough. It was hard, not just for the lack of work, but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you,” Bates said.

Her broadway career took off in 1980 when she played Stella May in Come Back To The Five And Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. The actress lost out on film-screen adaptations of characters she played a few times. But when she turned 42 years old, she turned into a successful start almost overnight because of her role as a psychotic fan in Misery which even earned her a best actress Academy Award.

She talked about the kind of roles she received saying, “You’re either young and glamorous and you’re going to get the lead, or it’s the opposite: you’re not attractive enough. So you’re playing the friend or the killer or the lesbian or the doctor or whatever,” she said. “But the one who gets to play the young, pretty, gets-the-boy-at-the-end role doesn’t have any power. And vice-versa: a character can have power, but not femininity.”

She started directing episodes including some for shows like Homicide: Life On The Street, NYPD Blue, Oz and the hugely successful TV series Six Feet Under.

In her personal life, the actress has experienced some setbacks related to her health. She was diagnosed with cancer twice in her life; in 2003 and 2012. In 2003 she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and with breast cancer in 2012.

Following her breast cancer surgery, actress Kathy Bates started to open up about her lymphedema diagnosis. She works as the spokesperson for the Lymphatic Education & Research Network.