The description of the character is that Frankie is an attractive woman if she'd just put a little effort into how she looks. So that's basically the way I played her. I consider myself an attractive woman, and I can be not-so-great-looking if I don't put effort into how I look. But more importantly, the core of the character was someone who had given up on love, and that could be any age, any size, any form of beauty. That could be anybody.
In response to criticism that she was too beautiful to play a lonely waitress in Frankie and Johnny, quoted in Pfeiffer: Beyond the Age of Innocence by Thompson, p. 223