I really felt that I had to stay level, I had to control, I had to know what I was eating, I had to know what I was doing, I had to work out. All that stuff is very powerful and it really helps, but now I don't do it out of survival. At first, I was just trying to survive. I assumed at some point I'd be screwed otherwise.

I loved acting when I was doing it, but getting the jobs I didn't understand because I'd never had to do it. That was a difficult lesson for me. It was very humbling and very bizarre.

I think that things like curses or whatever - those labels - come from belief systems, universal belief systems. So when you get a global consciousness of something, then that becomes a quote-unquote "truth" for everybody. You know, "This is what happens in the Kennedy family." "This is what happens with the Hemingways." And the more people believe in it, the more it kind of resuscitates the problem; it keeps bringing life to this idea that a curse exists that you can never get out from under.

I think it’s the misperception of addiction and living life on the edge, as if it’s cool.

For me, first, it's finding quiet in my life - and I do that through yoga and meditation. It's also been a matter of changing the way I eat, because I think what we eat can inform who we are; food is a chemical and a drug to a certain extent.

A lot of exercise is mindless; you can have music or the radio on and not be aware. But if you're aware in anything you do - and it doesn't have to be yoga - it changes you. Being present changes you.

The 'Hemingway curse' was such a huge, awful thing for me to have to deal with. . . . The reality is, because there are genetic tendencies toward mental illness, you need to be aware of them.