I believe that life is hard. That we all are going to walk through things that are hard and challenging, and yet advertising wants us to believe that it's all easy.

I've always put my family first and that's just the way it is.

I'm going to look the way God intends me to look... with a little help from Manolo Blahnik.

I have very short hair. It's the only cute haircut I think I've ever had.

I don't think any woman wants to be known for being beautiful or busty. I think you want to be known for who you are.

I've etched out who I am through myriad haircut attempts, outfit attempts, beauty attempts, diet attempts. It's been an evolution.

The more I like me, the less I want to pretend to be other people.

I actually think there's an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older.

If you just watch a teenager, you see a lot of uncertainty.

Now all of a sudden I'm so less interested in pretending to be a lot of other people, and much more interested in being me.

The biggest lesson I've learned from my children is to look in the mirror at myself, not at them. I've realized that everything I've done has had an impact on them. We have to understand that they are like little paparazzi. They take our picture when we don't want them to and then they show it to us in their behavior.

I'm a human being who lives a flawed, contradictory life. And I have all sorts of problems and all sorts of successes.

I used to dream of being normal. For me, if Kirk Douglas walked into the house, that was normal.

I thought, while they're up and firm, why not shoot them once or twice.

Well, I could do it for a day, but I wouldn't want to be a teenager again. I really wouldn't.

My mother and stepfather were married 43 years, so I have watched a long marriage. I feel like I had a very good role model for that. And, you know, it's just a number.

The most rewarding aspect of parenting is seeing my children be authentic. The most rewarding thing for me is to see them do anything that they're proud of.

I'm not a prophet. I'm not a teacher. I have no degrees. My degree is from the University of Life.

I talk too much.

I was doing a children's book on self-esteem, and I really felt like I wanted to shed the shame I'd been feeling - and maybe make it easier for women my age who had probably felt bad about themselves.

I wasn't the kid who lined up her toys, although when it came to Barbies and that little traveling wardrobe with the drawers and the little shoes, my stuff was always on hangers and the shoes were always in pairs. Things had their places.

I think I felt that I was very well known for my figure and needed to keep that up for my work. And I regret all of it. I felt fraudulent and very shameful.

Getting sober just exploded my life. Now I have a much clearer sense of myself and what I can and can't do. I am more successful than I have ever been. I feel very positive where I never did before, and I think that's all a direct result of getting sober.

With short hair you have to get a haircut every two or three weeks. And if you're coloring your hair, you have to color it that often. Every time I did it, I felt fraudulent.

Being an actor, you are recognized for being somebody else, whereas these books are distilled from me.

Actually, the books were never a planned career path.

I think happiness comes from self-acceptance. We all try different things, and we find some comfortable sense of who we are. We look at our parents and learn and grow and move on. We change.

I can play rhythm guitar. I know how to hold a guitar and strum it.

My deal was that they would use a full-length picture of me in my underwear and a full-length picture of me all done up, and they would write about how long it took and how much it cost, because that was the whole point. It was very liberating.

Kids are going to try drugs and alcohol; that's part of society.

All the work built my fame and certainly made me more money, but the toll it took in my home was not good.

And I was ashamed of myself for feeling like I had to do that in order to look a certain way. I felt misshapen, just not natural anymore. And I think it was a big stimulator of my drug use.

Because I know I'm an addict, and I know I'm an alcoholic.

Hollywood is the backdrop of my family, and I know that the movie business is incredibly cruel as you get older.

I love performing and pretending - it's very easy for me.

I think my capacity to change has given me tremendous happiness, because who I am today I am completely content to be.

I try to go to the gym three times a week. And I have to watch what I eat. I'm a normal person.

I work with The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. I sit proudly as one of only two recovering addicts on their board.

I'm a layperson. I barely got out of high school. I have no business telling people what to do or my big philosophy on life. I'm certainly not going to write any sort of memoir.

I've been going through photos of my mother, looking back on her life and trying to put it into context. Very few people age gracefully enough to be photographed through their aging.

I've been happily married to Chris for almost 20 years.

I've been in showbusiness all my life, but as an actress I have never been overly driven.

If I'm honest I don't think the world would miss me if I never acted again.

It was during a cosmetic procedure that I first had painkillers.

My marriage? Up to now everything's okay. But it's a real marriage - imperfect and very difficult. It's all about people evolving somewhat simultaneously through their lives. I think we've emotionally evolved.

So, am I friendly with my daughter and her friends? Yes. Am I their friend? No. Does she shut the door? Yes, and I very much support the shut door.

The parameters are such that I don't get offered a lot of work. I'm sure most directors hear my list of don'ts and say forget it.

Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this.

I'm a tidy, neat person. But I'm not a maniac.

The challenging part of parenting for me is to make sure that an individual person is an individual and not some sort of cookie-cutter version of me. At the same time, I want to make sure that I impart my sense of the world as an adult.