It's also easy to fall back into what's familiar, what feels safe, what you've done before.

What helped me most were my failures and slumps - when I couldn't get work, people weren't interested in me or had written me off.

I have a list a mile long of faults that sometimes bring me to my knees in self-hatred.

You can only lead by example.

You get kinder when you get into my age range. You think back to how really unkind you were, and how cynical you were and how you tossed things away and you tossed people away, and you didn't care because you were climbing some mountain that you thought you needed to be on top of.

When asked what it takes to succeed in the acting profession, Bette Davis would answer, "The courage to be hated."

I always signed autographs when I could and always stayed and chatted with them when I could.