My memory of my mom is a wine glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She was a runway fashion model, and she was quite a glamorous woman.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Growing up in North Carolina, my mom was always just sort of my mom to me. I never really recognized her as a famous actress. I'm always thrilled when she's cleaning out her closet. Last time, I got a pair of boots that she bought in Paris 20 years ago. I have completely worn them out.
Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.
A lot of the things I hold onto have memories attached to them. Bags, shoes and jewelry that were given to me from photo shoots and fashion shows throughout my career.
My mother was a medical records librarian and wonderful with us girls. She sewed a lot of our clothes - really glamorous, beautiful clothes - and I think that's part of why I was so successful when I went off to Paris; she'd made me all these wonderful clothes to take.
I remember the feeling of a tweed Chanel jacket because my mom used to wear one to work.
I made a very slatternly mother, notably unkeen on housework, unaware that homes need to be cleaned now and then, and too often to be found with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other.
I can no more think of my own life without thinking of wine and wines and where they grew for me and why I drank them when I did and why I picked the grapes and where I opened the oldest procurable bottles, and all that, than I can remember living before I breathed.
My mom was a model, and her laid-back but put-together sensibility really rubbed off on me.
My mother's favorite photograph was one of herself at twenty-four years old, unbearably beautiful, utterly glamorous, in a black-straw cartwheel hat, dark-red lipstick, and a smart black suit, her notepad on a cocktail table. I know nothing about that woman.
A cigar is as good as memories that you have when you smoked it.