There’s her big regret about her career, for example, as well as her surprising childhood ambition.
Let’s dig a little bit deeper and get to know more about this iconic actress.
It was a simple childhood, and Smart never strayed too far from her Seattle home.
“I didn’t even fly on an airplane until I was 20 years old,” she said.
Smart said that she’s “never bought into that” and “certainly didn’t experience that.”
She did, however, want to enter the arts just in a different way.
Alas, Smart “never had the guts to try it,” as she toldVariety.
Talented actress though she may be, comedy is a completely different beast.
“So, I didn’t ever want to put myself in that position,” she confessed.
For years, she more or less ignored her diabetes, rarely bothering to test her blood sugar levels.
She got her blood sugar to a safer level and became what she calls “a professional diabetic.”
“But I had no choice,” she explained.
“What you do for a baby is more than you’ll ever do for yourself.
After graduating from college, she set her sights on the Seattle theater scene.
“I managed to just get by, you know?”
But something would come along.”
As she toldBustle, she had never considered film work early in her career.
“I’d been trained to be a stage actor, and I loved it,” she said.
“It really started everything for me,” said Smart.
With such an impressive resume, it’s no wonder thatVarietycalls Smart “TV’s MVP.”
She’s had a successful stage career, and has starred in some pretty major sitcoms and films.
Later in life, she participated in “Encore!”
Smart had a blast.
“And I thought: why, why, why, why didn’t I do this earlier?”
“Jean was always like the dream,” Aniello toldThe New York Times.
“It really did me in for years,” she said.
“He’d meant so much to me.
He was a very important part of my life my first love in every sense of the word.”
Per theChicago Tribune, Smart was 36 when she and Gilliland tied the knot in 1987.
… you realize that you could do anything almost to protect that child," she toldThe Philadelphia Inquirer.
“She was an unconventional gal,” Smart toldTV Insider.
… Women weren’t out in public.
They were at home."
That being said, things are far from perfect.
As Smart has grown older, she’s come up against ageism.
But women can be funny and everything they were at 30 [when they’re older]."
She revealed toThe Philadelphia Inquirerthat they were once separated but that their time apart didn’t last very long.
After they reunited, they remained together until Gilliland’s deathdue to a heart conditionin 2021.
His death came unexpectedly, and left Smart reeling as she was completely unprepared to lose her husband.
“It’s been really weird,” she toldThe New Yorker.
“It’s not anything I ever dreamed would happen.
Not so soon.”
Smart recalled their long relationship, speaking of his sense of humor.
“He made me laugh all the time,” she said.
“That’s going to be hard to live without”
