The 51-year-old actress will reportedly leave Hollywood and move to Italy, because she thinks she will be better respected on the Continent.
She has declared that Hollywood's obsession with youth is starting to bother her, now that age is becoming an issue for her. In Europe actors are treasured for more than "simply how they look today". The actress won't totally give up her stage work in New York, but says that Hollywood is over.

In an interview for the New York Daily News, she recalls how she was trying to hide her rheumatoid arthritis from the U.S. film industry, by disguising herself into an alcoholic. For her, it was better to have that reputation than people in the industry find out about her disease.

"I was afraid I wouldn't get work", Kathleen said. "My hands were very crippled for a while, so I kept dropping glasses and things because I couldn't grip them. Some of the medications make you blow up and puffy, so the rumor was that I had a drinking problem."

"The point is it was safer for me to let people think I was drinking than to tell them that I had this. They always hire drunks, all the time. But they wouldn't hire someone with a disease they didn't understand."