My daughter Tiffany met Katrin when we took a train to Oxford to see Katrin in Simon McBurney's play "Mnemonic." Like every bit of time spent with Katrin, the evening was special. Tiffany and I arrived in a nearly empty thousand-year-old college town, wowing at everything we were seeing -- and laughing at ourselves. "Geez, Katrin dragged us up here to this insanely beautiful town!"

Her work onstage -- and I'm not a theater fan, I don't get it for the most part -- was so genuine it was as if she had taken all the energy of the room and beyond and anchored herself in it. Her acting was dense and yet at the same time, seemed so fluid and effortless. This is what we always look for in actors and very few ever achieve it, let alone every time. She played a character who was searching for a lost parent (father, in this case). Katrin had been blessed with loving parents but was deeply affected by her father's own parentlessness, and she played every bit of emotion she absorbed as a child of her father's own private sorrow. This was her incredible gift -- maybe it is supreme empathy and the ability to infuse us with it.

Of course at some point I gave her a script for all these reasons. She turned me down, but I now see, sardonically, that I was in great company -- with all the other directors she said no to! This was the beauty of her instinct: It was as if she was channeling characters, and if she felt she was not the right channel she didn't take the role, no matter who the director was or what the paycheck might be. And when she said no, she was so fine with it that she made it fine with me. This can be embarrassing among friends in this business, but Katrin not only made it OK to turn me down, for both of us, but told me what I needed to look for to find the right actress for that role.

With all she taught me about a character whom I had created with Kurt Voss, my co-writer, and who was very personal for me, I was able to find exactly the right person in Kim Dickens, who shares the bravery Katrin had shown in "Claire Dolan." (The role was Sherry in my movie "Things Behind the Sun," which came out last year.) Katrin made me cast bravely for that role, and made me a better director as a result.

We still kept looking for things to do together. This summer I sent her a script by Kurt for a series of short films we planned, even though it wasn't my own project. Katrin returned my call with an enthusiastic "Hello, hello, my dear Allison!" -- the kind of thing that makes your heart jump up and down. She knew how to make you feel missed and appreciated and never very far from her thoughts.

She could handle people who others turned away from; she was a real student of people that way. I often heard her say of someone, "People find her difficult but I get on with her." She never trashed anyone or gossiped, and even when there was someone I didn't think I would like she'd insist, "You're wrong! You'd love her! She's one of us!" I felt so lucky to be in that club that I would tolerate anyone!

Well, she loved Kurt's script, and even though Katrin and I would not be working together, we would be close, and I was so happy that Kurt would get the chance to create this vision with her. She had of course already given him great insight into the character, and our biggest dilemma was finding someone good enough to act opposite her. I was watching a movie on TV the day she died, looking at one possible candidate as her leading man. He was good -- but nowhere good enough, I thought to myself, to be in a movie with Katrin.

I was lucky to have known her. Her impact on my life was enormous. But the world can share Katrin's greatest contributions, her characters: Hannah in Mike Leigh's "Career Girls," Sophie in "Naked," Dodo in "Breaking the Waves," Dark Annie Chapman in "From Hell," of course the entirely unique and everlasting Claire Dolan and so many more.

The tributes to her have been many and varied, from directors Mike Leigh and Simon McBurney and so many other people who loved her. She is not just missed in the theater and film world: Former Smiths singer Morrissey dedicated his performance of "Late Night, Maudlin Street" at the Royal Albert Hall to her memory.

Since her death I have been in contact with friends of Katrin's, and now they are becoming friends of mine. She would have wanted that too. I received an e-mail from Lodge Kerrigan, the director of "Claire Dolan," whom I've never met. He let me know what her funeral had been like and I invited him to come up to Carpinteria next time he's on the West Coast. Maybe we will walk that same bluff from my dream and talk about our friend. It'll just be one more gift Katrin gave us.

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