Misery to Matlock KATHY'S STAYING POWER

The Hollywood legend's built a decades-long career on characters that scared

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At 76, Kathy Bates is riding high with her new hit TV show about an ageing lawyer who’s always outwitting the whip-smart youngsters around her.

But not so long ago, the Misery star’s phone wasn’t ringing off the hook. In fact, it was hardly ringing at all and she was on the verge of giving up on her acting career.

“I remember calling my agents and saying, ‘I think maybe I want to go into, if not retirement, semi-retirement,” recalls the actor, who was questioning if she could even afford to keep her beloved LA home.

“I just began to ask myself, ‘Do I want to maybe move to France and call it a day?’ And then I got this script. It just fit me like a glove.”

The script, of course, was for the TV drama Matlock, in which Kathy plays Madeline “Matty” Matlock, who takes full and fabulous advantage of the way people either overlook or underestimate the elderly.

The show is a reboot of the popular 1980s legal drama starring Andy Griffith and Kathy admits she wasn’t keen when the script for the pilot episode arrived.

“When I first read it, I thought, ‘This is just episodic and I’m not interested in doing that,’” she says. “Then I got to the end and there’s this twist. I said, ‘Oh, yes, I’m in!’”