I worked with so many comedians who became big names - so many, I can't even remember some of their names. John Byner, Totie Fields, Joan Rivers. Shecky Green at the MGM. When I started my career, my first hotel in Las Vegas was at the old Flamingo. My opening act was Bill Cosby.

I've had an ambition to be somebody since I was 13 years old because I wanted to help my family. I wanted to hurry and grow up so I could make enough money to buy my father a big car and my mother a beautiful home with an electric washing machine and all those things she used to see in the newspapers.

Frank Sinatra discovered me at a nightclub called P.J.'s in Hollywood. It was 1962. He used to come in there a lot with all his big star friends. I was so nervous to see him. I've only had one idol in my life, and that was Frank Sinatra.

I knew Sinatra for 38 years. He was like my father. Frank Sinatra was my 'dad.' He treated me like his son. He gave me the best advice about singing, about this and that... He was a very sensitive man, very astute, one of the sharpest men that I ever met in my life.

If my British film career was a girl, then I'd been hanging around outside her apartment a little bit too long.

I really thought when I was pregnant with my first that it wouldn't affect my work at all; it would just be a baby that grows up on set. And I was absolutely wrong. For women, the high point of their career and needing to have babies just don't really go together.

I didn't realize it. It looks like my career happened overnight, but it didn't. I was basically living on my own from when I was 17 on.

Early in my career, I'd plan something out for my characters. But I've learned that if you know who your character is and you go on instinct, it won't be wrong. It's never wrong. It's just different.