My mum, a strange creature from the time when pickles on toothpicks were still the height of sophistication.

This [my backside] is still very, very big.

I wanted to be self-sufficient, I wanted to take care of myself, and I wanted to learn. I wanted to travel, I wanted to see the world and have my eyes opened. I wanted to be consistently challenged, and I knew I needed to be creative in some way. When I got my job in a bar and I could pay for my tuition and go on auditions and sometimes get jobs that I loved and pay my rent, I knew that I would be all right. That's when my dreams came true, long before the telephone rang and someone said, 'Come and meet Tom Cruise'".

I've never been the sort of person who takes things for granted, and I'm not an acquisitions girl. So I didn't feel entitled to a car when I was 16. Of course, I was bummed I didn't get one, because I was an American Texas teenager! But I understood it. I've never gotten my self-esteem from having the newest, most spectacular thing.

Motherhood has never been an ambition. I don't think like that. I never have expectations like, 'When I'm 19 I'm going to do this, and by the time I've hit 25 I'm going to do that'. I just take things as they come, each day at a time, and if things happen then all well and good.

Once you've reached the point where you can pay rent, you can go to the vet and you can go to the grocery store, after that point it's all the same. I don't have the appetite for a decadent lifestyle.

Actually, I'm delighted when someone confesses to being surprised to discover something about me. It means I've been very successful in maintaining what is most precious to me - keeping the things that really matter in my life unexposed.