I had my first child at 21, my first restaurant at 24.

My idea of opening a restaurant was important. The whole point is that I couldn't have been totally dependent on acting for my income... even though I want to remain in the field of entertainment forever.

I used to be brave. In the past, I've opened a restaurant, had a record label, had my daughter and it was go, go, go with all of these.

The most difficult thing is to make sure the standards remain high in each restaurant.

Just because you eat doesn't mean you eat smart. It's hard to beat a $1.99 wing pack of three at a fast-food restaurant - it's so cheap - but that wing pack isn't feeding anyone, it's just pushing hunger back an hour.

I'm in the process of brainstorming with my marketing team and all that stuff, trying to come up with a concept for a late-night restaurant for people in Birmingham.

I only have the restaurant. If I do other things, it's only to do with the restaurant.

I have to say I love Dempsey's Brew Pub & Restaurant. It's gorgeous with that Camden Yard brick surrounding it, and it just screams Baltimore. I love the Black and Orange Burger that is topped with fresh orange bell peppers, caramelized onions and sharp cheddar cheese.

This music that was supposed to only come from tapes like in any restaurant. Something would happened. One bird will start to do a little jazz thing, and another bird will start to answer.

Gramercy Tavern appeared on the cover of New York Magazine the day we opened, and it was five deep at the bar with people who were not necessarily here to dine. They just wanted to kinda sniff out the hot, new restaurant.

You'll always find me at a good sushi spot. Once, at a restaurant, a cook came out from the kitchen and asked for a picture with me. That was flattering.

When I started on the very first day with just one restaurant, we used to pick oregano off the stems and chop them. We still do that.

The craziest thing I've ever done to get a guy's attention? I admit I stalked someone. I showed up at a restaurant where I knew the guy worked, and we were actually good friends and had lost touch, and I pretended that I didn't know he worked there.

Here is what I am not going to do: I am not going to go to a restaurant, take pictures of my food, download them, and call that a blog. That is beyond the pale. The Internet is such a bazaar of self-indulgences that I don't know why that particular one should bug me so much. But it really does.

I grew up in the restaurant business, and that's always something I wanted to do.

I went straight from college into restaurants, so, from the beginning, my idea of what a kitchen should be was the highfalutin' restaurant type - and what I had at home never measured up to that.

There is no restaurant anywhere in the world where I have been that I haven't been able to find something to eat.

Christopher Plummer once told me that he never orders a wine without first confirming that the restaurant has a second bottle in case he loves it.

Violence and chaos were an ever-present part of the world that I grew up in. And unfortunately, it wasn't just in my family. Sometimes, you'd see, you know, Mom fighting with one of her boyfriends. But a lot of times, you'd see people exploding on each other in a local restaurant or on the street.

I'm a constant waffler. I've said to anyone I've ever dated, 'Asking me to choose a restaurant is going to be a conversation that's going on for a while.'