I spent a good deal of time going back over my childhood, my midlife, to try to understand who I was. We're supposed to be complete and whole, and you can't be whole if you're trying to be perfect. Doing a life review helped me get over the disease to please.

To do life right, you have to feel like you're growing up until the day you die. The thing I'm proudest of is that I have stayed curious. I have every intention, when I'm on my deathbed, of saying, "Oh, my God - I get it!"

I'm vain. My arms are thin, but I'm vain about loose flesh. And so I'm careful that what I wear will show off my best parts, which are my waist and my butt.

I never wanted to be an actor. My dad was an actor, and he never brought joy home, so I didn't view it as something that I would want to do. But I got fired as a secretary, and then I started studying, I started doing it just to earn money. And it took me a long time to learn to love it. And what I loved was telling a story. I tried to avoid making plays or films that weren't telling a story that I felt was important. I discovered in the process that it makes you more empathic because you have to enter someone else's reality and learn to see through many other people's eyes.

Rituals are important. I get up. I take the dogs on a walk around to the front and then I pick up the papers. Then I walk around to the front door, then me and the two dogs come in the house and I give them treats. I make coffee. It's the regularity of these kinds of rituals that I find deeply satisfying.

I always carry yeast flakes and bran with me when I travel.

Being by myself, that is to say, without a man - it's been a long time - is allowing me to know what it feels like - to live in my own skin, to remember what I miss and don't miss about a relationship.