Within our culture every school has a swimming pool. We lived on the coast. People swam in the surf. It's a very sporty nation and at that particular time anyone who had an artistic bent was very much an outsider. So if you liked reading or ideas or playing the piano then your dad viewed you as a sissy basically.

It was you know probably 80 degrees out in L.A. and my dad took me outside and there was snow. At the time I thought 'Every kid doesn't have snow in their backyard on Christmas?'

My dad is such a good man. You know how when you are a child you think your dad is invincible? Well I still think that - he is so wise and everything I do I ask my dad's advice about first.

But while mum and dad were incredibly caring it was also a very chaotic household where everyone fought about everything. So I know what it's like to internalize all that chaos.

I've never tried to find my real parents. I'm very grateful to my mum and dad for adopting me - they're completely incredible people. It was my dad who encouraged me to question everything to forge my own path to think to read. I always felt it was my right to question everything.

I was always okay with the fact that I was taller and bigger than everybody else growing up. My mom my dad and my friends always told me I was beautiful.

But I honestly don't read critics. My dad reads absolutely everything ever written about me. He calls me up to read ecstatic reviews but I always insist that I can't hear them. If you give value to the good reviews you have to give value to the criticism.

My dad was a labourer and my mum had exactly the same job as Noel Gallagher's mum - she was a dinner lady at our local school. Everyone comes over from Ireland and they get the same jobs.

My dad had a commercial film company so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the '50s and '60s and '70s.

When I was little we had a Golden Book that had all these Disney characters in one portrait on the first page. My dad used to read from it every night. We'd play this game of find Pluto or find Donald Duck. He'd read us stories and do all the voices. Those are great memories.

Now I meditate twice a day for half an hour. In meditation I can let go of everything. I'm not Hugh Jackman. I'm not a dad. I'm not a husband. I'm just dipping into that powerful source that creates everything. I take a little bath in it.

I mean I look at my dad. He was twenty when he started having a family and he was always the coolest dad. He did everything for his kids and he never made us feel like he was pressured. I know that it must be a great feeling to be a guy like that.

I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night.

I get that same queasy nervous thrilling feeling every time I go to work. That's never worn off since I was 12 years-old with my dad's 8-millimeter movie camera.

My dad is still Christian Scientist. My mom's not and I'm not. But I believe in God and that there's a higher power and an intelligence that's bigger than us and that we can rely on. It's not just us thinking we are the ones in control of everything. That idea gives me support.

Dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately he didn't teach me everything he knows.

When my mom ran for the Senate my dad was there for her every step of the way. I can still hear her saying in her beautiful voice 'Why should women have any less say than men about the great decisions facing our nation?'