If I hadn't fought back, I might have been Gidget forever.

Had there not been a Mary Todd, there would not have been an Abraham Lincoln. She found him when he was a young lawyer and really a bumpkin. No one knew of him, but she recognized his brilliance.

But I was losing so much bone density that I would have been in grave danger. And I mean grave danger. If I had let it go just a few more years I could have broken my hip or spine just picking up my granddaughter.

I'd been kind of a hiccup in my parents' lives. They lost track of me and I didn't know what I was going to do with myself. And then fate reached in and took me in its hands. I was discovered right out of high school and started getting work.

You can't help but feel all the human-rights issues.

It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes.