My grandmother spoiled my father rotten, and he grew up expecting women to do whatever he wanted. When he married my beautiful mother, Elsa, he expected her to give up her career as a champion ballroom dancer and become a good wife and mother, which she dutifully did.

My mother was a domestic goddess and Mother Earth figure. She was sweet and placid - just what the perfect wife was supposed to be and I was determined not to be.

I received an OBE from the Queen, which probably doesn't mean anything in America but is quite nice in England - the Order of the British Empire for services to drama.

The easiest way to convince my kids that they don't really need something is to get it for them.

Euphemism in the workplace does not end with job descriptions. It reaches a pusillanimous peak at the other end of the work process - in dismissal.

If I was a marginal guy or a practice squad player or a career-long special teamer, you take a hell of a lot less hits in those roles.

I always looked at the process and the career of being a ballerina as sacred. It's a true gift to have this talent and perform these masterworks; it's sublime.

If you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But ten years later somehow, you don't quite know what problems are worth working on.