It's hard to imagine Patricia Arquette's career as anything short of inevitable. The veteran actor grew up in an acting dynasty that stretches back to the vaudeville era, with her siblings David, Alexis and Rosanna Arquette paving their own Hollywood trajectories alongside her. But Arquette wasn't sure performing was the right path for her. "I felt like maybe I'd be too shy for it or I wouldn't be good at it," she told me on "Salon Talks." "Just because you want to do something doesn't mean you're going to be good at it necessarily."
Now, however, after decades of creating indelible roles in movies like "True Romance" and "Boyhood" and series like "Medium" and "Severance," the Academy Award- and Emmy Award-winning Arquette is satisfied with how it all worked out. "I decided I would give myself a year to try acting," she said, "and then, lo and behold, I got work." And that latest work is as one of her most colorful characters yet, the wisecracking recovering addict and neophyte private detective Peggy Newman on the new Apple TV+ series "High Desert."
