Abbott Elementary's Sheryl Lee Ralph Has a Life Lesson You Need to Hear

Have you also learned to set new boundaries? 

I'm learning that. My manager is always saying, “Remember you need time for yourself. Remember you cannot say yes to everything. Remember rest is important.” So I've made a better commitment to myself in terms of working out and taking great care of myself. People always say, “You look great,” but taking care of myself is such a luxury. It is a luxury to think enough about yourself that you work out and that you eat better, that you actually make an appointment to get the checkup with the doctor. Those are such great luxuries, and to take advantage of them has been good and needed. But I'm still learning. My dad used to always say, “Be a lifelong learner. Never stop learning. Never stop being curious.” I wish that I had paid attention earlier, but I'm glad I'm doing it now.

Speaking of making time for what’s important, I read that years ago you wore a string around your ring finger to remind you to make time to date and find the person you wanted to spend your life with. One, that’s amazing, but would you still do it if you were single now?

Oh, absolutely. I was so focused on my career, which was thriving. It was all working out. I had famous friends. I had all of this, but there was nobody there to love me. There was nobody there to share all of this success with me. When I tied that string on my finger, I said, “I am committing myself to getting a ring on the finger. This string will be replaced, and I'm going to work at it the way I work at my job.” And that's what I did.

So what did you start doing differently in your life?

I stopped going to all the places I used to go. I traveled further. I went to different places. I did different things. I changed the circle of people that I was around. I eventually got married, and I had two amazing children. The relationship did not [last]…

But now I need to know how you met your first husband.

I had a film in Cannes in 1990. It was called To Sleep With Anger, a Charles Burnett film. I had won the Independent Spirit Award, so I was on another professional high. They took the film to Cannes, and the first or second night I was there, one of the lawyers/producers on the show said, “Meet my friend.” I said, “Okay, hello. Well, who's sitting there?” And he said, “You are.” That was that. We were married six months later.

How soon did you tell him about the string on your finger?

He knew about the string because I was wearing it when we met. He asked me what it was, and I told him, “It's because it's going to be replaced one day with a better ring.” And it was.

Speaking of the wedding, Jet magazine wrote in 1990, “[Ralph] is planning a massive wedding somewhere in the Caribbean that she hopes to keep private.” And you said, “I'm going to have 2,000 balloons, 5,000 imported flowers, four trumpets, a string quartet, a Calypso band, a steel band, a regular band, and a disc jockey.” Did that actually happen?