On a recent morning in midtown Manhattan, I walked to the back of the Whitby Hotel lobby to find Judith Light wearing large, resin-framed glasses and reading the New York Post. She was dressed all in black—pants and a long-sleeved shirt—her only nod to the sweltering summer heat outside a large, floppy, mud-colored straw hat that had once belonged to her mother.

Light is a veteran of the entertainment business, admired not only for her longevity but for her versatility. She’s done Broadway (three Tonys), soap operas (two Daytime Emmys), hit sitcoms (“Who’s the Boss?”), prestige cable drama (“The Assassination of Gianni Versace”), and an award-winning Amazon series, Jill Soloway’s “Transparent,” whose final season—a musical extravaganza in which Light sings, dances, and does a full split while spinning on a chair in a nude bodysuit—premières later this month. Light is what industry folk call a “jobber”—above all, she likes to work. She will appear in the new Ryan Murphy series “The Politician,” alongside Ben Platt and Bette Midler, and will star in the Spectrum series “Manhunt: Lone Wolf,” as the mother of Richard Jewell, the man falsely accused in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing. And, last week, she finally earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Among her many talents, Light has the gift of gab. Throughout our roving conversation, she discussed how she fell into doing soap operas, her love of discount designer clothes, her unusual arrangement with her husband (they live in different cities), and the ups and downs she experienced persevering in the business for half a century. Over breakfast, she encouraged me to put down my utensils and scoop up melon slices with my fingers. At one point, she offered me advice on whether I should freeze my eggs. Our planned hour together stretched into two. Two follow-up phone calls, which were scheduled for twenty minutes each, lasted another couple of hours. Before the first call, I received a long voice mail: “Hi, sweetie, this is Judith Light. I want to tell you about my mother . . . ”

This interview has been edited and condensed.

You grew up in New Jersey.

Yes, Trenton. Though my father was from the Bronx. No money. No fancy pants. Originally, my father was in the fruit and produce business. My grandfather came from the old country, and he was an egg candler.

I’m sorry, a what?

An egg candler! He was the person who held the egg up to a candle to see if there was a chicken in there or whether it was just the yolk.

That was an actual profession?

Oh, yes, it was in the Bronx. Then he got into the fruit and produce business, and my father, Sidney, followed suit. My mother came from some money, in Scarsdale. Early on in New York, she used to model for artists who would draw women for fashion things. Her name was Pearl, but she changed it to Sue, because she didn’t like it. My parents moved to Trenton so that my father could start his business, and she became a women’s buyer. She bought clothes there for a shop called the Ship Shop.

Did your mother have a strong sense of personal style?

My mother was always a bargain shopper. Loehmann’s was a big place where we shopped. I still have my Loehmann’s Gold Card. I will not give it up. I was never a Rodeo Drive lady. I’m Judy from New Jersey.

My mother’s style was very simple. It was elegant. She loved labels. But she also knew how to buy a really great white blouse, a great man’s shirt, in the vein of Carolina Herrera. She grew up in a time when women were not supposed to be more than a secretary. I think, if society and her family had supported her in a different way, I think she would have gone on to do much more. She always wanted me to do as much as I could possibly do.

You studied acting at Carnegie Mellon in the nineteen-sixties.

I was doing community theatre at the same time as I was going to high school. I had a remarkable drama teacher named Ruth Strahan. She was the one that founded the Carnegie Mellon program. I graduated in 1970, and then I went into repertory theatre for several years. I started at the Milwaukee Rep. Then, one day, Nagle Jackson, who was a wonderful artistic director, said, “You have to leave here. I know you can do more but you have to get out there. I’m throwing you out of the nest.”

What were some of your memorable early roles?

At the Milwaukee Rep, I did a play called “Cat Among the Pigeons,” which is a Feydeau farce, and I played the ingénue in that, or the soubrette. I was never really the ingénue. I always played a character-y character.

So you get to New York. You’re about twenty-five years old. What happens?

A casting director, Rosemary Tischler, who I think is still in the business, said, “I’m going to cast you in a very tiny part in a Broadway show.” And so I did “A Doll’s House,” starring Liv Ullmann and Sam Waterston. You may be too young to remember who Liv Ullmann was.

I know who she was!

O.K. We did it at Lincoln Center, at the Vivian Beaumont. It was just a remarkable thing to be given that gift. I got that, and then after that I thought, Oh, this is what it’s like. Great! You have someone who is your champion, and you come to New York, and then you do great theatre, and then you do feature films, and then you’re set. But, as time went on, it wasn’t happening like that. I was deeply disappointed, deeply unhappy. I was living on unemployment. I thought, Oh, my God. I don’t know how I’m going to do this. I called my father at one point and I said, “Listen, I need six hundred dollars to make it through the month.” And he said, “I’ll give you three; see if you can make it.” I think he wanted to know that I had the resilience to pull this off.

How did you make it through the month?

I was in therapy. God bless my therapist. I think he charged me thirty-five dollars a session. He was a wonderful guy named Bill Kennedy. I was really heavy at the time. And Bill was the one who really taught me how to eat and changed my perspective on eating. I was eating from emotion and fear, and shoving my feelings down. He said to me, “You don’t know how to ask for what you want. It's showing up in your relationship to food.” And he told me to hang in. When we talked about career stuff, he said, “Don’t do anything until you see me next week. Something’s going to happen,” and I said, “Oh, great. Are you psychic?”

So was he psychic?

I literally left there, and my pager rang. Those were the days when you had a pager, and if your pager rang then you called your service, and your service gave you the message. The message was to call my agent, and he said, “They want to see you for an understudy on a soap opera.” I said, “Wait a minute. I told you I never want to do a soap opera. That’s not in my plan.” My agent said to me, “You’re running out of money. It’s three hundred and fifty dollars for the day.” So I said, “I’ll do it.”