I promised my mom that if, after a year of putting 150 percent into my career it didn't work out, I would go back to school. I never did go back.

I actually enjoy that I never really needed to be hanging out with every celebrity in Hollywood; I just go home and hang out with my cousins, my best friends. I'm not treated like royalty; they love me to death, but they don't treat me like royalty. So it's easy for me; they'll tell me the truth, whether it hurts or not. And I need that; I've always been given that.

As a teenager, I had big breasts for my age, and my friends cracked on me a lot.

Having Black hair is unique in that Black women change up styles a lot. You can walk down one street block in New York City and see 10 different hairstyles that Black women are wearing: straight curls, short cuts, braids - we really run the gamut.

New Jersey is a great place to live. And we have given some of the best talent to the world, from Jack Nicholson, John Travolta, to Jerry Lewis to Bon Jovi to Frank Sinatra.

If my brother and I wanted money in our pockets, we had to get jobs - my first was at 15, at Burger King.

My mother wouldn't allow me to speak slang when I was growing up. But when I got outside, around my friends, it was 'Yo' and 'That's the joint' and 'Yo, what's up?' So I had my game for my friends and my game for my mom.