I would literally sit at home and have my friends take pictures of me on my little Canon camera that my mom gave me for Christmas.

My mom told me many times that when you are outside, you have to be careful what you are saying, and don't repeat the words of what you hear at home.

I used to beg my mom to let me put a real bed out in forest so I could lie there and listen to the sounds of the forest while still having all the comforts of home.

For almost five years on 'Happy Days,' I have had a mom and pop and a brother who give me advice and help me just as my own parents and brothers and sisters do at home.

As a little girl, I was athletic: 'Oh, mom, look at me. I can do cartwheels.' I was one of those annoying kids. I craved the spotlight. I had the feeling since I was little that the stage was my home.

I shoplifted. I was about five years old, and I took a candy from a store. We paid for three of them, but I took four, and I went home and cried. My mom took me back, and I paid for the missing piece.

At home, Mom served us turkey breakfast links that she got at the health-food store. But whenever we went out for breakfast, she let my brothers and me order pork sausages (though, inexplicably, not bacon).

When I was about 12, I came home from middle school and told my parents I wanted to be an actor. My father didn't say it to me, but he told my mom, 'No. I'm not going to allow that. He'll starve to death.' I grew up in a small town in Illinois where being an actor was not something people did.

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