For me, I try to see difficulties as a way of expanding and growing as a person inhabiting this planet.
I feel lucky. I think acting can help to keep you young. It does make you feel there's meaning in your life.
My music touches on things I am concerned with in my own life - the idea of a woman's role in society, sexuality, desire, monogamy, fantasy and glamour. That's what keeps me alive, and if I couldn't keep creating that, I'd fall into a bit of heap.
I was on 'Murder She Wrote' with Angela Lansbury. She was fantastic... she was lovely to everyone, she was always on time, prepared. Whereas when I worked with Bob Hope, he didn't know his lines. He had to have these huge big cards... he hardly said two words to me all day.
It is a good thing to happen to you, to have that taste of fame because then you don't hanker for it.
He wasn't really Method but he believed that when you did a role there were lots of things you could do with your co-star in order to create the right environment. You known, if you were supposed to be in love, to create that feeling between the two of you.
I just feel passionately about a few things and particularly about helping artists get off the ground.
I love Soul, R+B, Electronic, and good pop. Really, the only thing I don't listen to is country and heavy metal. I love Marvin Gaye, John Legend, Al Green, Fat Freddys Drop, Sade, Grace Jones, Bazoo Bijou, Prince, John Lennon, London Grammar, Daft Punk, Dr John, Dusty Springfield, Peggy Lee, Gotye, and on it goes.
I think some people in their 20s really get it, that acting is about creativity and the work. They get their maturity from their work.
For the pageants, it was my mother who got me involved in Miss America. It really gave me the opportunity to sing all around New Hampshire. And it was great when I was young, but looking back, it was also unbelievably stressful.
And that might have led to other shows but you know what LA is like. I was in my early 30s and it wasn't going to get easier. You know, that's when you start to wonder if you might have to get lots of plastic surgery.
I love music because you can create a world through your records. I have total control over what I do and what I wear. It's like my own world out of my imagination rather than someone giving me lines.
Children are my pet cause. I have a foster child in El Salvador, and whenever I'm home, I work for the Adam Walsh Foundation, which finds missing children. I also do some hospital visits and other things for the Make-a-Wish Foundation.