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My role model, my idol, was Francois Truffaut.

A rumor that followed me forever was that my family was in the mafia. For years I had to live with it. They'd call me the mafia princess, so I rolled with it for the rest of high school. People even joke about it today.

I could never have conceived that I would ever get to work in a Truffaut film. It was astonishing to me, and still is. I felt like an old pro, but it was still so unexpected.

I think mine is the fullest and most plausible account of what went on in Marie Antoinette's life.

I wrote my novel 'Bitter Greens' as the creative component of a Doctorate of Creative Arts and am now looking at the history of the Rapunzel tale as my theoretical component.

My partner, Danny Strong, came to me with this idea of telling a story about my life and merging that with music and the hip-hop world. He wrote 'The Butler' and originally wanted to do 'Empire' also as a movie.

Gene Krupa was my big hero, and I used to play on my mother's flour cans and sugar cans with the kitchen knives, listening to the big bands on my dad's records. Gene Krupa and Harry James.

I remember a conversation with my parents about who the people on the TV were, and learning they were actors and they acted out this story and just thinking that was the most fantastic notion, and that's what I want to do.

My father was a really sharp cartoonist and filmmaker. He used to tape-record the family surreptitiously, either while we were driving around or at dinner, and in 1963 he and I made up a story about a brother and a sister, Lisa and Matt, having an adventure out in the woods with animals.