I just want to continue to grow, as an actor, and dig. Hopefully, one day, I'll lose myself in a role. My only worry about that is that I just want to be able to come back home. I don't want to get lost forever. That scares me.

I didn't leave home until 27. I was an only child raised in Philadelphia by my mother and grandmother. My grandmother controlled the stove. She made a lot of potato meals - mashed potato, potato souffle, potato pancakes. When we didn't have electricity we ate romantically, by candlelight.

There's something really magical about having a child - it's like permission to begin again, start over, reevaluate some things, check yourself. Recognize yourself.

My mother's a genius. She just kept feeding me art on whatever we had; paper plates, silver platter, didn't matter. You know, she just kept feeding it to me. So we went to see all kinds of theater. We would go to the art museum pretty much every Sunday, and I would watch her. She let me know that art was supposed to touch.

For my writing, and because I love talking to young women about life, I often asked them which would they rather have - a father in the house with them while growing up or a big butt? I tell you 86 percent of the time, girls say a big butt because it gets them further.

Beauty is an understanding of what you have, and it's forgiving yourself of what you don't have, and appreciating all of it.

I'm excited about turning 40. I've been an adult for a long time, but there is a difference between being an adult and being a grown-up. I'm someone's mummy now and I'm enjoying that. I feel as if I'm about to hit my peak.