When somebody mentioned yoga for the first time, I just looked at it and thought, 'This isn't for me; it's for an older woman down at the health club trying to get supple.' But I thought, 'No, I can see the benefits there. I've got to embrace it.'
To play an older woman, 'til the look is not affected, it is never a problem for me. To play a matured character, it's different. You get to learn so much. It becomes more serious.
You can call me an older woman - I don't mind that at all - just don't call me an old one, because I'm not.
I remember my oldest son, Steve, saying to me once, 'I don't ever remember seeing you with an apron on.' And I thought, that's right, honey, you did not. That was his concept of what a mother should be.
I remember, I was at the house with my oldest son and I got that call from Johnny Ace. You know that call. Johnny was the guy that hired me, fired me and hired me back, which was kind of cool. But I was just fired, everything stopped, my whole world stopped.
My oldest son always wants to race. He's kind of like me and it now has carried over to the other two. They're all pretty competitive now. We do stuff in the pool. They're like fish in water. They go all over the place. They're kids. They like to play, have fun and compete with everything they do.
I am an oldies act - yes, I am - there's that part of me, but I am so much more than that.
Nothing makes me want to scream louder than oldies doddering on to a train at a slow shuffle when the rest of us are just trying to get on with our day.
Kids don't see me as an oldies person when I go out on stage. They see me as an energy force.
My parents always used to complain about my eating habits. I was different. I was wrong. Everything had to be plain or boiled. I was 14 before I ate pasta with tomato sauce. My dad would take me to the best restaurants, and all I would eat was rice with olive oil.
I made lemon spaghetti in an early season of 'Everyday Italian,' and to this day people still come up to me and say they love it. It's very, very simple. Basically, you cook the pasta and mix together Parmesan cheese, olive oil, lemon juice and zest and pour it over the pasta.
When I grew up in Italy in the 1950s, it was still very agricultural. Food was very important; produce was very important. Everyone made their own olive oil. It took me a long time after I moved here to understand that Americans are much further away from their food.
I always have parmigiano-reggiano, olive oil and pasta at home. When people get sick, they want chicken soup; I want spaghetti with parmesan cheese, olive oil and a bit of lemon zest. It makes me feel better every time.
Oliver Sacks remains my hero to this day. He was one of the first medical writers I read. The other was Lewis Thomas, who is no longer alive but is just heroic to me.
I've done movies with Oliver Stone and Michael Mann. And I've done quite a few dramas in my time, from the theatre to film work. I just think the audience is used to seeing me on 'Saturday Night Live,' and 'K-9,' and 'Curly Sue' and of course, 'According to Jim.' I think that my comedies have been the most popular.
I come from film, where I only play a character for three months at a time, and then it's done, so it's important for me to be able to put on other hats and make sure that all of the tools in my toolbox that don't apply to Olivia Pope are still in shape.
Suddenly, I was in a category with Barbara Striesand, Olivia Newton John, Donna Summer, Carley Simon - it was kind of neat for me.
Younger audiences are into me because I did 'Stuart Little,' and that movie was a very big deal for kids. And in 'Angels in the Outfield,' a generation of kids learned about magic and angels. And then, of course, there are these two blond girls named Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, and I played their nanny on their TV show.
My stepdad is Bruce Jenner, the Olympian. The first time he came over was like a blind date, and we had show and tell. He took out the gold medal for me and my sisters, and we were like, 'So? Who the hell are you?'
I was like, 'I don't know if I could be an Olympian...' But my dad really influenced me to stay and be in the Olympics.
