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.

Actually, the books were never a planned career path.

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

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

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.

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

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

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 talk too much.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

I attempted various types of plastic surgery, minutely but enough to stave off this encroaching middle-aged body. And every time I did, something went wrong. I felt misshapen, just not natural any more.

I barely got out of high school, and I look back at my life often and go, 'Wow, this was awesome!'

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 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 guess I want very much to be recognized for my abilities, for the work I put in, and yet it's still always there - who my parents were. As much as I love my parents, if that was the last thing ever said about me - that I was their daughter - I would be disappointed that my contributions weren't strong enough on their own.

I never represented glam. That's the thing, you'll never see me in the front row of a fashion show. I'm uninterested in it. I find it trivial and banal and boring.

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

I'm a performer. I've just been one since I was a little girl. I used to pretend all the time.

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