If you want something badly enough, make an attempt. If you want to paint, get a brush and do it. If you want to sing, sing. A lot of people get scared. They're afraid to fail. Take that word out of your vocabulary. You don't "fail." You've "tried your best."

When I was growing up, my mother, who had been through a lot of terrible things in life, taught me that when life is tough your instinct is to close your heart. But if you can accept what happened and reach out to someone, there will always be someone less fortunate, or someone that can bring a solution and help your life.

What I know now is that we're all interconnected and that's a really beautiful thing. We have links to everyone else in our lives and in the world. Different people have different journeys for different reasons. You can't judge, but you can celebrate that there are connections everywhere.

Motherhood has relaxed me in many ways. You learn to deal with crisis. I've become a juggler, I suppose. It's all a big circus, and nobody who knows me believes I can manage, but sometimes I do.

We must teach the next generation to not just learn languages, but whole cultures and belief systems. We will then make more of an effort to understand people and their different cultures.

Every once in a while I go off to do a movie or a television series and I take my art with me. I can stay in character when I paint.

Get over jet-lag quickly. I think a lot of people waste the first few days sleeping in the wrong time zone. Sometimes I take melatonin but at other times a glass of wine will do it.