Growing up, there was a lot of pressure for women to be good-looking, but my mum was very strict, and she didn't allow me to wear make-up. Looking back, it was good for me. It slowed me down from becoming an adult too quickly.

I didn't really know many girls, growing up, because there weren't many other people living around where I lived.

Not everybody wanted a female to be the front face of a big band, you know... You had to be three times better than a man had to be.

I lived in buses. I didn't really have anything else. I didn't feel like a female, and I ended up really kind of isolated. Everybody thinks you're so happy and so wealthy and such a big star, but you're really kind of lonely and don't know how to stop it.

I left school to concentrate on racing. It was a family decision between my mum, dad and myself.

I always say that in any roomful of people, I could hive a novel out of any one person's family or life story.

My parents taught me everything and set me up for life. I owe to them all the things I'm passionate about: music, art, the people I love, my career and family life, the fact that I have children and the way that I raise them.

I've not given up having a child. But I hope whatever route of parenthood I choose, whether it's adoption or I'm able to conceive, I just hope that I'm able to give someone as beautiful a life as my parents gave me.