When I came out, I was 68, and I was totally prepared for my career to recede when I spoke to the press for the first time. What happened after that blew me away. I started getting more offers. My career blossomed.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I got into journalism because I came of age in the '60s. It just seemed one way for me to get things done.
My career started young and I was really ambitious, and then I had success and I hung out with people who were much older. I think I might have been temporally misplaced, so I thought I was 40. It was a premature midlife crisis.
That's why I made a comeback in 1988. I knew there were chances of not making it, but I didn't want to end up at sixty years old and say I should have tried when I was thirty-eight.
I wanted to quit the industry when I was eighteen and finish '70s', finish my contract on the show and go to college because I was pretty convinced that after '70s' and after being on a show for eight years that I would be very much pigeonholed for something specific that I didn't want to be a part of anymore.
I thank God I didn't become successful until I was older.
When I was nineteen years old, I was the number-one star for two years. When I was forty, nobody wanted me. I couldn't get a job.
When I was younger, I felt pressure to become someone else once I became successful.
Eventually I lost the idea that I could have a career. I thought I was too old.
At 88 years old - with every intention of living decades longer - I'm still running a company, writing articles, launching new ventures, and fully enjoying life.
As I grew older, I worked less as an actor and as a model, and I went back to what I had tried to do when I was young but wasn't really available. I'm so glad now to be in my sixties and to be able to go back to school.