at a Washington congressional hearing on the need for research of the painful and crippling disease amid her ordeal. Hart, who was compared to Grace Kelly, was instrumental in developing the Abbey of Regina Laudis's project of expansion of its community connection through the arts, using her fame. Paul Newman helped her with funding for a lighting grid, when she envisioned a year-round arts school and a better-equipped stage. Another friend, the Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, helped support the abbey's theater. Hart's vision was to meet the abbey's needs—development and expansion of its open-air theater and arts program for the Bethlehem community. Every summer, the abbey's 38 nuns on of rural land, help the community stage a musical, with the 2008 presentation of West Side Story, after previous shows Fiddler on the Roof, The Music Man, and My Fair Lady. Hart was named prioress of the monastery in 2001, after the election of Mother David Serna as second abbess of Regina Laudis, and held that office until 2015. Hart remains a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, having in recent years become the only nun to be an Oscar-voting member. Hart often appears in public wearing a beret on top of her habit. When asked about it by an interviewer she stated that early in her vocation, because nuns have to "cut your hair quite short in order to get your cap on, your wimple, your bandeau, and all of that", she told her superior that "my head is freezing even when I put the veil on!" When informed that she could "put another veil on top of it" she thought "oh, that's pretty dull isn't it? And someone gave me a little tam, so I asked if I could wear that." She was granted permission "and now a lot of the young ones [novices and other nuns] pick up the beret [because] they like it, but it's not actually part of our habit. It's part of our tradition that what helps a nun to be herself can certainly [be] a part of our system." On October 4, 2008, the Holy Trinity Apostolate, founded by the Rev. John Hardon, S.J., sponsored a "Breakfast with Mother Dolores Hart". Held at Rochester, Michigan's Royal Park Hotel, Hart told her story: "He Led Me Out into an Open Space; He Saved Me Because He Loved Me: The Journey