Most actors in my position, at 47, you want your annuity show. You want your Marg Helgenberger role on 'CSI.' But that's like winning the lottery. So you try and keep yourself sane.

I was never about being a celebrity. Maybe when I was very young, but that goes away quickly. I've met almost every famous person I want to meet.

I guess I'm the queen of the Web series. Yeah, right. I'm not at all. I'm on 'Leap Year,' and previously I've done 'Supermoms' and now AOL's 'Little Women, Big Cars.' That supposedly did very well.

I chose not to go home and struggle with the New York scene. My size sort of locked me out. I was too short for the stage. I would have been doing character roles, so I went to Los Angeles. There is a lot more happening out there. I also felt it was important to break away from my family.

I never liked my father. He really was a dullard and misanthrope. My mother and he were married for 22, years and it was an ill match. She encouraged me to be a writer. She opened her home to black friends, and this was the 1950s. She didn't care later when I write about her.

In the House, you can predictably spend roughly four to seven days back home with family.

When I was 5 and my sister was 3, we went on a family trip, and she ate cheese off the floor at an airport. My mother, a germaphobe, got very upset. My sister, of course, got a stomach virus, and ever since then, I have an aversion to cheese.

The hardest thing for me was leaving my friends and family behind.