You get to a point in life where it suddenly occurs to you that you don't need all the things you once thought you did--that it's really, well, convoluted. My life feels overblown sometimes, and I don't want it to be. I want it to be streamlined. So I'm living a much more unscripted life now than I have in a long time.

I was always a singer and a dancer, and I always wanted to be an actress. For me, it's all just one thing.

I grew up in the Bronx where you would stay up late with your girlfriends, just being silly in our bedrooms, whatever. And I was always the clown.

I don't get anything for free. I pay for all my beauty treatments.

I like to maintain a certain sense of fantasy. At home, do I have the full hair and makeup? No. But I might have the nice dress on.

All of a sudden one day I was like, I'm good at this! Oh, man! People are not giving me jobs because they feel sorry for me! I am an actress. I am a singer. I am a performer. That's what I do! Once I started giving myself a little credit, the whole world opened up.

In the past, love for me has always meant forever, and sure, you still nurse some of those fantasies, but I don't try to force it anymore. I hung on to my fairy-tale ideals for a long time. But where I am now, what I've been through, there are no rules. There are lots of ways it can turn out.