From the time I was very young, maybe five or six, I thought a lot about being an actress. I didn't tell my friends about my ambitions, though, especially when I got older, because I thought they would not receive them well. I never talked about what I wanted to do.

Trivia:

Learned sign language at a very young age, as both of her parents were deaf. When Fletcher neared the end of her (spoken) Best Actress Oscar acceptance speech for Einer flog über das Kuckucksnest (1975), she finished with a unique (unspoken) touch in American Sign Language: "For my mother and my father, I want to say thank you for teaching me to have a dream. You are seeing my dream come ...