I was so skinny, they gave me the nickname stechetto - the stick. I was tall, thin, ugly and dark like an Arab girl. I looked strange. All eyes. No flesh on my bones.

I think the quality of sexiness comes from within. It is something that is in you or it isn't and it really doesn't have much to do with breasts or thighs or the pout of your lips.

I was born wise. Street-wise, people-wise, self-wise. This wisdom was my birthright.

No press conference announcing a last film. I'd just steal away. Best way because, if by chance after two or three years something interesting comes up, I would not - like Sinatra - have to say: 'Well, I've thought it over and decided to come back.'

I've never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don't understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now.

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go so much further than people with vastly superior talent.

You do not become a star, you are born a star. A star is born with that indefinable extra something.