I like having a good time. It's probably my mother's Brazilian genes in me - party, party.

My mother was a union member. She was a mail carrier, a rural mail carrier. She called herself a 'postal packin' grandma' for a good period of time.

My mother and Ethel Kennedy became good friends and worked together on a number of causes they had shared with their husbands. They together co-chaired 'A Time to Remember' to mobilize a movement for gun control.

I am not allowed to be afraid. My mother made me like that. As a child, if I was afraid of the dark, she would lock me in the closet. Things like this. And she would talk about the time she spent in the concentration camp, but not about being afraid, only about the good side of it.

Of course I wanted an agent from the time I was like 5, but my mother was like, 'No, you're going to be normal, you're going to go to school, you're going to get good grades, you're going to play soccer, and if you do well, if you keep your grades up, you can do one community-theater show a year.'

I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I'd get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother.

The credit of my good upbringing goes to my mother, who's not only been a single parent to my brother and I, but she's also been 'our' manager for the longest time. Our father, on the other hand, remained elusive and away from the family for most part of our lives, which left a certain void but also made us creative and reflective.

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