When I was young, I was the sweetheart of the press. They loved me but were kind of waiting for me to mess up. I had no skeletons in my closet, no major past to talk about.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Everybody I knew, practically, was a journalist when I was a kid - my father, all of his friends. I never wanted to be like those people.
My father was a newspaper editor, so I was surrounded by journalists my entire life. I think the fact that he was so well known may be why I chose to go into magazines and move to the States at a young age.
It was at a vividly bad time in Norman Mailer's life that I met him, and a sort of water-treading time in mine. He had stabbed his wife, and I was a copy boy at Time magazine.
I'm lucky that, despite all the bad press I've had over the years, the public still seems to like me.
My mother sent me to speech classes, but the other kids still teased me. I was shy. I stooped. Instead of talking, I kept journals. That's where my love of words comes from. I majored in journalism.
My parents were journalists and friends with writers, artists, and just a really interesting assortment of people, so I was exposed to all lifestyles from a young age.
I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn't ever have to rely on the press for my information.
The world when I was 13 wasn't truly driven by tabloid magazines and social media and reality shows. I was able to have a little more of a private life.
I've met some great people that deal with me in the press. I've also met some people that were very dishonorable, frankly.
I have been fiercely private, in part because I could never understand how a journalist could be otherwise. I was also the mother of small children, and security concerns were paramount.