My New Year's Resolution List usually starts with the desire to lose between ten and three thousand pounds.

I think the goal is parity: I try to be pro-woman without being anti-man, and I hope and wish that men could do the same in that when they look at the screenplay, they say, 'Wait, wait, wait - is my daughter represented here, is my wife represented here? Is my sister represented?'

The candid and honest and pure heartedness of children has strengthened my views that we are all equal and should be afforded the basic human rights that we all deserve.

When I wanted to go away to college in Toronto, my dad said, 'You can't go.' When I got to Toronto, I bought a couch, and my dad cried for the whole weekend because, as my mum told me, 'Now you have furniture; he knows you are never coming back.'

My heart goes out to children around the world who face terrible poverty. But the United States cannot give asylum to every child in that situation. It would not be sustainable. But we should care for those who are truly in danger.

I think I was well brought up, for my father and mother were of one mind regarding the care of the family.

My father's very public life as Famous Amos was the opposite of that of his ex-wife, my mother Shirley, who was fighting a very private, solitary battle with mental illness.

It has been tough being a mother of two daughters without a co-parent because I think I was a child myself, as my mother was.